


The Red King Awake

by KL_Morgan



Series: The Lay of Looking-Glass Land [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azgeda Clarke Griffin, Azgeda!Clarke, F/F, Fluffity Fluff Fluff, IceNation!Clarke lights me up like Christmas, past Klark/Echo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-23 21:25:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12516900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KL_Morgan/pseuds/KL_Morgan
Summary: "He's dreaming now," said Tweedledee: "and what do you think he's dreaming about?"Alice said, "Nobody can guess that.""Why, aboutyou!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. "And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?""Where I am now, of course," said Alice.Klark wakes up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story follows two timelines: 
> 
> 1\. Two years before the events of "The White Queen Running."
> 
> 2\. The events immediately after.

“It’s impressive when you think about it.” Klark cranes her head to look past where the cave empties out into sheer cliff face, the startling drop below. “Any of you could have slipped and fallen on the way up. But everyone made it in one piece. Good job.” 

 

She turns back to the three children who are huddled together in the back of the cave, wary and wide-eyed. It’s two older girls, and a boy sandwiched between them, partly out of consideration for his age and partly for the sake of the tattered nest he’s cradling in his lap. The whitebird chicks inside it are still making soft _peep-peep_ noises.

 

“ _You_ made it up okay,” one of the girls says.

 

“I’m really tough,” Klark says. “I’m bigger, too. So it’s not as impressive.”

 

“I don’t think our families will see it that way,” the other girl says. “I think they’re going to be really angry, and they’re going to yell a lot.”

 

Klark shrugs. It was worth a try. “You can’t stay up here forever.”

 

“But maybe if we stay a _little_ longer,” the first girl says, sounding hopeful, “they’ll get tired of being angry by the time we go down.”

 

“... yeah, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.”

 

“Are you the new queen?” the boy pipes up suddenly. It’s the first time he’s spoken since Klark heaved herself up and into the shallow cave. He’s barely _blinked_ since then, staring at her, and Klark tries to look unintimidating when she smiles back.

 

“Not yet. I will be after the coronation ceremony.”

 

“You’re why the Commander came,” terribly solemn.

 

“I guess so,” Klark says slowly. “But you don’t have to be scared of her. I know she brought a lot of warriors, but she isn’t here to fight us. Not anymore.”

 

“What does she want?” one of the girls asks in a whisper, and the three children draw together even tighter.

 

“To be friends,” Klark says, trying to soothe. “To help protect us, and ask us to protect other clans, too. Everything is going to be different from now on, I promise. I know you’ve heard awful stories about her, but she’s not that bad. She’s just a girl. Like me.”

 

And she’s lying through her _teeth_ , but what is she supposed to say? That Genai’s presence at her back was the only thing keeping her calm at the welcoming ceremony? That watching the boats emerge from the soft fog -- there’d been an agreement, via emissaries, that perhaps breaching the border was not the best start to relations between their clans, and so the Commander had landed on the far shores -- with the ramrod straight figure standing at the helm had made Klark’s head pound with a rage she’d been afraid everyone could hear?

 

Abi couldn’t have warned her about the Coalition, it hadn’t even existed when she left the Ice Court. Still, Klark is a little resentful she had to discover all on her own that deposing Nia would only be the first step in a much more complicated and unfortunately _diplomatic_ process to peace. She’d expected to rule. It was galling to discover not even the throne of the Ice Nation allowed for unchecked power. Not anymore.

 

Of course, Klark could always decide they wouldn’t join the new Coalition. The Commander hadn’t questioned it, but she also had to know the option was open until the moment Klark was formally crowned and then swore her fealty -- or not. She had to know that, she was just ignoring it. An extended bluff as they both played at perfect accord and harmony in the meantime.  

 

Maybe harmony wasn’t the right word. When Klark thinks of the impassive expression the Commander wore, the fog licking at the edges of her fur-lined coat as she stepped onto shore, _harmony_ doesn’t spring to mind. The coolness of the Commander’s tone, the extra force of her squeeze as Klark gripped her forearm in greeting, didn’t encourage that impression either.

 

“She’s not a girl, she’s the _Commander_ ,” one of the children protests. The other two glare like Klark tried to play a trick on them.  

 

... well.

 

“Alright, that’s true.” She settles so that she’s up on her knees, sitting on her heels with her hands on her thighs. “But I am _Queen_. Or I will be,” as the little boy opens his mouth. “And, and -- you heard about me.” Genai would laugh until she was sick to see Klark play on this, especially as she’s spent the past few weeks trying to diffuse the rampant superstition and fear her appearance inspired, but she won’t hesitate now. Not if there’s an actual use for it. “I’m the girl who walked out of the storm. The barrens couldn’t kill me. Nia couldn’t kill me. I killed _her_. With this hand,” she says when struck with inspiration, and leans forward to hold it in front of them.

 

The children lean in to peer at it. Her left hand is covered in all kinds of scars, since Abi never pretended she didn’t know which was Klark’s dominant in their sparring sessions. Klark used to complain that no one else would guess it, not if she kept her weapon in her right most of the time. “Not out here,” Abi had said. “But once you’re queen, word will spread. That’s when the worst fights will occur, and I want you to be prepared.”

 

Her mother had never doubted Klark would become queen. Klark never knew if she loved Abi for that, or hated her. Sometimes it changed from day to day.

 

“This is the hand that protects _you_ , now,” she tells the three children. “Against raiders from other clans. Against rogue warriors of this Nation. Even against the Commander herself, if she tries to hurt you.”

 

“Queen Nia wasn’t like that,” one of the girls says softly.

 

“Nia was a _bad_ queen.” The other little girl’s eyes are shining. “Everybody says so. Things are different now.”

 

Klark smiles at her, and it’s as if her heart, which has felt for the past weeks as though it’s been frozen with grief, or maybe that damn blizzard, thaws a little. This is why she’s here. This is why she made herself walk through that storm. This is why _she’s_ still alive, even when Abi isn’t.

 

It helps to remember that.

 

“What about our parents?” the boy asks. “Will you protect us against them?”

 

Klark hesitates, drawing her hand back. “If they try to hurt you, yes.” She levels the three of them with a look. “But I think you know the difference between when adults are frightening, and when they’re frightened _for_ you.” That’s a lesson she learned the first time she was attacked, alone on a hunt. She finished the warrior off easily -- she might have only been a child, but he was exhausted and unused to the barrens -- and returned home to Abi with only a small cut on her hand, a bruise spreading under her chin. Abi had panicked as if she’d come home beaten within an inch of her life, thin-lipped and anxious as she checked Klark’s injuries again and again, quizzed her on the details of the attack. Eventually Abi decided it was happenstance enough, and far enough away from the caves where they were hidden, that they shouldn’t move just yet. But Klark woke up in the middle of the night for the next handful of days to find her mother awake and keeping watch, her fear almost as tangible as the frozen winds that howled across the wastelands that kept them safe.

 

That was when Klark realized the endless drills and sparring, the constant lectures on clan histories and politics -- it was all _for_ Klark. Maybe she mostly hated it, and maybe Abi even knew that, but it didn’t matter. Abi thought it would one day keep Klark alive.  

 

Klark just wishes that had made the years that followed any easier.

 

“So,” she tells the children, stern, “if you come to me and ask for my protection, I will give it.” She meets each of their eyes in turn before adding: “But I am trusting you not to abuse my service to you, as my people. And a true warrior knows to take responsibility for their actions.”

 

That’s what gets through to them in the end, and she convinces them to let her carry them all back down the cliff face. There’s no way she’s letting them climb down, of course, but even all three combined (she puts each girl on one hip and the boy at her front, uses her slingshot as a makeshift sling) isn’t a weight that troubles her. She’s going _down_ , after all. And they’re still light compared to the meat she’d carry back to her mother after a successful hunt. She couldn’t hunt too close to their caves or risk drawing enemies back to them. Over the distance the meat would freeze, until it felt like she was carrying a solid block of ice and bone together over endless stretches of wasteland, the wind howling like an animal itself. Compared to that, scaling down a cliff face with three underfed children, their arms wrapped around her neck, is easy.

 

Except she never came back to the caves to find Genai looking at her the way she is once Klark puts both feet, and then the children, back on solid ground.

 

“Two hours,” the older woman says. Her arms are folded tightly. “You were up there for two hours.”

 

“They took some convincing.” She throws a look over her shoulder to see the families rushing to pick up each of the three children, scolding and hugging them by turns. The kids appear resigned.

 

“You had an audience scheduled,” Genai reminds her through gritted teeth. “She waited for you. For _two hours_.”

 

... oh. _Oh_.

 

There’s no need to specify who “she” is; Genai has yet to refer to the Commander by her title since she stepped onto Ice Nation land. Genai can barely look at her without a faint scowl on her face, either. Klark is surprised -- Genai had been full of the Commander’s praises before her arrival, talking at length about the workings of the Coalition. She made no secret that she considered joining it to be in their clan’s best interests, though of course she wouldn’t gainsay whatever decision her would-be Queen eventually made. But Genai made no bones about the Commander’s tactical intelligence, her prowess as a fighter, and Klark might find herself up against these things if she said "no."

 

Something has changed in the past few days. Klark’s not sure what caused it, but Genai has become... wary of the Commander. She watches the Woods Clan leader from the corner of her eye, and there’s the faintest curl to her lip whenever the Commander addresses Klark. Klark has pestered her about it, demanded to know what she’s so bothered by, but Genai has been atypically reticent with her opinions. Klark has washed her hands of it: she has enough to worry about elsewhere, what with all the preparations and meetings leading up to the coronation, and it’s not like she’s spends much time with the Commander anyway. She doesn’t think they’ve seen each other, except in passing. Not since the welcome feast.

 

That was the point of the audience, now that she thinks of it. The Commander requested some time out of Klark’s packed schedule to discuss... well, probably the Ice Nation’s entry into the Coalition. And Klark has just blown it off.

 

Whoops.

 

“We’ll reschedule,” she tells Genai with a shrug. “I wasn’t going to leave them up there. Not even for the Commander.”

 

“You could have sent someone else,” Genai says with exaggerated patience, as if speaking to a small child. “You have your own personal _guard_ to do things like this, now. When will you remember to act like a queen?”

 

Klark opens her mouth to say something like _whose example do I follow, Nia’s?_ or _however I act_ is _how a queen acts, that’s how it works_ when she sees the little boy pointing in her direction, and on the edge of tears. “Hold on,” she tells Genai, jogging across to him and his parents. “What’s wrong?”

 

“He says you promised to bring down the birds as well,” one of the warriors tells her reluctantly. She has her hand on the boy’s back, protective, as if she’s afraid Klark will become angry. Klark doesn’t know her name, or the name of the other woman, who’s holding the boy in her arms. They both bear Nia’s scars on their faces.

 

“I said...” She promised the birds would be _safe_ , and she knew they would be, now that the children had rescued the nest from its too-precarious perch on an outcropping and placed it in the cave. Apparently the little boy thought that meant safe with _them,_ though. She takes another look at his anguished expression, the guarded looks on his parents’ faces, and sighs. “I’ll be right back.”

 

She practically throws herself up the cliff face, climbing quicker than she has in her life to keep Genai from catching her and dragging her back down. She’s halfway up before her bodyguard notices what she’s doing and starts to yell, but the winds break up Genai’s voice and fling the pieces around so that Klark only hears “please, your Maj-” and “ _still waiting_.” She ignores it all, concentrates on clinging to the rough rock with her toes and fingertips, the way the winds whip at her cheeks with a cold so fierce it almost burns.

 

Klark is back up in the cave in minutes. It’s getting back down, she realizes, which is going to be difficult. The three children were heavy but they clung to her, leaving her arms and legs free. The nest of chicks -- who are now huddled together in a frightened, feathery lump -- needs to be cradled in one arm and held in the shelter of her body so the wind can’t snatch them away. She can manage it, though. She thinks she can manage it.

 

She _almost_ manages it. She’s firm on that whenever Genai tries to throw it in her face, afterward. Genai is just as firm that it doesn’t count when your climbing hand slips and you’re still two lengths of your own body off the ground.

 

When Klark slips she feels it all along her side, and her first thought is that Genai will be _livid_. Biting back against the urge to cry out in pain is second nature at this point; she always had to stay secret, stay silent, out in the barrens. That doesn’t stop her knees from buckling, and then the side of her boot is scraping against the rock without purchase, and then she’s falling.

 

Someone shouts _“catch her_ ” but Klark doesn’t recognize the voice. She feels that too-familiar drop in her stomach as she goes, wonders how many bones she’ll break this time. Wonders who will set them now that her mother is dead.

 

She knows better than to brace herself for a hard landing, but she’s surprised when it’s a soft one. Or, softer than expected -- she collides into a body, and someone’s arms go around her with an _oomph_. For a split second Klark thinks they’ll stay like that, she’s caught, but then the person holding her tips backwards and they both fall awkwardly together into the snow.

 

Klark’s mind goes blank for several moments after that, overwhelmed with the relief of _still alive_ and _not hurting_ (much). Her head snaps up when she remembers the whitechicks’ nest -- but she lets out a sigh when she sees they’re fine. The nest smashed on the way down but the drop didn’t hurt the chicks themselves, and the three kids are now cupping one each in their hands, all smiles.

 

There’s a hard expulsion of breath right by her ear, and Klark finally turns to her rescuer.

 

It’s the Commander.

 

Klark scrambles back onto her hands and knees, heedless of the pain in her side. At least she’s mindful enough about it that she doesn’t knee anything soft, or put her hands anywhere they shouldn’t be. She’s pretty sure.

 

“Sorry,” she gasps. No, but wait. “You didn’t have to -- I would have been fine. I’m fine.”

 

The Commander remains on her back for a long moment, and Klark gets the impression she’s cataloguing the various aches and bruises she’s acquired. She sits up gingerly, resting back on her elbows. “You’re welcome.”

 

Annoyance warms all the parts of her that went cold when she felt herself fall. “I just told you --”

 

“I heard.” The Commander leverages herself to her feet, surprisingly limber for someone who was just fallen on. Klark herself doesn’t quite feel up to the task, but better than than remaining on her knees in front of --

 

“Oof.” It’s a small sound, purely unconscious, and so soft Klark doubts she would hear it if she wasn’t pressed up against the Commander where the other girl caught her before Klark toppled over. They’re almost the same height, and Klark is struck with the thought that it would be so very easy, so very comfortable, to put her forehead on the Commander’s shoulder and let her weight be carried by someone else.

 

“Your Majesty?”

 

Klark blinks the spots out of her vision. The Commander’s hands are on either side of her face, holding her head up. She has no idea when that happened.

 

The Commander frowns at her. She does that a lot, if Klark is being honest -- her face, around Klark, seems locked into some degree of displeasure. It’s infuriating. She’s not that much older, so Klark doesn’t understand where she gets off acting so... Acting like she’s in a position to approve or disapprove.

 

Or maybe she’s like this with everyone. Supposedly she has a lover back home, amid fabled green lands that hardly ever see snow. (Genai didn’t tell her that. She probably wouldn’t be as adamant that Klark eat every few days with the younger warriors without supervision, if she knew what kind of gossip they talked, though.) Maybe the Commander even scowls when she kisses.

 

When Klark’s eyes focus again the Commander is searching her face, eyes darting. “Are you hurt anywhere in particular?” she asks, quiet and intense. “Your color is bad. No, hold still,” although Klark had no intention of moving. The Commander holds her steady with one and and pats her down with light, quick touches with the other. Klark is about to summon up all the imperiousness she’s learned in the last weeks to _demand_ to know what she is _doing_ when something gets touched flares up hot and bright with pain, and Klark hisses.

 

The Commander draws her hand back. The tips of her fingers are speckled with red.

 

Klark reaches for the edge of her quilted overshirt and pulls it up. She’s wearing several layers of soft shirts underneath, but the drag against the rock face has caused them to tear and fray, revealing a bloody scrape that covers half her ribs.

 

The Commander’s eyes go wide.

 

Klark lets loose a long, heartfelt groan. The Commander’s grip on her arm tightens.

 

“Genai’s going to throw a _fit_ ,” Klark whines.

 

The Commander’s shoulders relax even as she scowls. “You took a stupid risk. You have no right to put yourself in that kind of danger. Not now.”

 

Klark knows that. She _knows_ that, she didn’t spend her life dodging Nia’s agents without learning the value of playing it safe. She can’t name a successor until she’s Queen; the entire Ice Nation is balanced on the knife’s edge between rule and unrest until she’s crowned.

 

She also knows what it’s like to believe there is someone in the world who carries its weight, who keeps the ground steady beneath your feet. What it’s like to realize that person is actually just as fallible, as frail, as you are.

 

That little boy can’t be more than six. Klark will fall off another cliff face or two if it means he gets to keep his illusions of how much adults are capable of, at least for a while longer.

 

“I guess that’s where we’re different,” she says instead. “I’m not afraid of a little blood if it helps me achieve my ends. Maybe if you felt the same, I wouldn’t have had to take care of Nia for you.”

 

Maybe Abi would be alive.  

 

The Commander’s eyes narrow, her mouth thinning at the unsubtle challenge. She yanks Klark by the elbow and marches her back to her bodyguard. Klark is not about to be manhandled -- not by anyone who isn’t Genai, anyway -- and she’s about to give the Commander a piece of her mind. Soon as things stop spinning.

 

They reach the others before that happens, and the Commander practically shoves Klark into Genai’s arms. “She needs a healer,” she says, bordering on a snarl. “Our meeting can wait for another time.”

 

“Thank you, Commander. Your patience is appre--”

 

The Commander jerks her chin up and Genai stops mid-word. Klark has to learn that trick. Yesterday.

 

“Just see that’s she’s tended to. And soon, before she tries to provoke any _other_ clan leaders.” The Commander stalks off in the opposite direction.

 

Klark’s wobbling a little bit on her feet, so when Genai looks at her it feels as if she’s doing it from a great height. “Do you have a death wish?” the older woman demands. “Is that our problem? Without the threat of execution hanging over your head do you feel the need to fall off cliffs, or taunt one of the greatest warriors alive? Are you _bored_?”

 

“No,” Klark says sulkily. Then, a little smaller: “I really do need a healer.”

 

Genai sighs long and loud. Then she slings Klark’s arm around her shoulder, injured side facing outward, and grabs her around the waist until she’s half-carrying her Queen’s weight. Walking like this back to the long lodges means Klark barely even stumbles.

 

“I’m sorry,” Klark says halfway there.

 

“It’s a small thing in the end. Patching you up will do fine for the ritual challenges tomorrow. And you made the children happy.”

 

“No, I meant... I’m not getting along with her. I know it’s important to try. I’ll try harder.”

 

Genai doesn’t have to ask her to clarify. “I know you will do what is best for all of us in the end.”

 

Ouch. “I will. I just -- I wish I liked her better.”

 

A few minutes later Genai sighs again. “Perhaps it’s better this way. Partnerships of this importance shouldn’t be clouded with... emotions.”

 

“Maybe.” But Klark can’t help swallowing back a little bit of bitter resentment at the fact that the only other person she knows who is close in age and position is so... cold. So clearly unimpressed by everything Klark is.

 

Not that Klark cares what she thinks.

 

Still, there are a few days left to the coronation ceremonies before she’s officially crowned. She makes up her mind there and then: before the Commander leaves for her homeland, Klark is going to make the other girl take her seriously.

 

Whether Klark joins this Coalition or not, she’s going to give Lexa of the Woods Clan a reason to remember her.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

It’s an old ritual, an extension of the one that allowed Klark to challenge and kill Nia -- Queen’s Combat. Only now _she’s_ the one defending the throne of the Ice Nation.

 

Of course there are no serious challengers. Participants were required to declare their intentions last night at yet another welcome feast, this time for the leader of the Shadow Valley Clan. (Klark is actually beginning to tire of the rich foods and elaborate dishes they serve at those feasts, and she _never_ thought that would happen after so many years of the same kinds of game and vegetation available to the barrens.) Today Klark will only fight a handful of warriors, mostly the old guard who remember a time before Nia. They want to show their approval of their new queen by losing to her with a measure of grace. She and Genai have discussed at length that if there is anyone with actual ambition -- anyone who would _dare_ \-- to take her crown, they’ll attempt to advance by subtler means. Nia reigned through fear and intimidation, and those who learned from her aren’t the type to relish open combat.

 

Either way, Klark isn’t worried.

 

So she can’t help taunting the former prince as the warriors mark the circle of combat, breaking up the frozen ground with their belt knives: “Are you sure you don’t want to try and salvage your family’s honor, Roan? I could consider a late challenge. For your sake.”

 

It is her prerogative. She’s no longer obligated to accept any challenges after the night before combat, but that doesn’t mean she’s required to refuse them. It’s her little bit of salt to -- well, not so much rub as _grind_ into Roan’s wounds, and from the flicker in his eyes he both knows and feels it.

 

Not that you could tell from his response. “Our new queen is magnanimous beyond belief,” he says smoothly, with just that touch of dryness to his tone. “But having seen her fight, I already know I am beaten. If you will excuse me,” and he sketches a bow before striding off.

 

Right. Klark keeps forgetting he was skulking in a corner when she slid her knife between his mother’s ribs. Well, maybe someday she’ll have the chance to do the same to him.

 

“I thought we talked about antagonizing him,” Genai says, at her shoulder.

 

“You talked. I listened. I didn’t make any promises.”

 

Genai sighs, pulling her heavy cloak tighter around her. It’s a bright, sunny day, but the wind puts the chill back into the air. “Don’t you think that problem requires a -- a softer touch, going forward? You did kill his only family.”

 

Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night from a dream of Abi stumbling back into their caves, knifed by one of Nia’s warriors. She wouldn’t stop talking, giving Klark last minute advice and instructions -- “I finished him but I didn’t have the strength to bury the body, you have at least two days before his companions find these caves but not more than four, there’s a storm coming, you need to find a new hiding place” -- while Klark searched for the wound. She’d known it was fatal even before she found it, deep and sucking just below Abi’s lungs, because she could see flashes of the blood on her mother’s teeth.

 

“His family started it,” she tells Genai. She shakes her head to preclude any response from her bodyguard and changes the subject: “Will you hold onto my skinning knife for me?”

 

Genai’s mouth snaps shut. “You’re only fighting with the one knife?”

 

“Do you think I need both?”

 

Genai, who was also there when she killed Nia, sighs again. She slips Klark’s skinning knife into her own belt.

 

The combat ends up being a little difficult. Just maybe not for the same reasons they’d be difficult for other people. Klark takes care to read the skill and speed of her opponents before matching it, doesn’t let each encounter last too long. She has to gauge when and where to take a hit, allowing her opponent their due, but not so hard or often as to affect her in later fights. She’s relieved when her final opponent concedes. Diplomacy, she reflects ruefully as she accepts another bow of concession, is a lot more difficult than the duel itself.

 

“Good work,” Genai murmurs as Klark walks back to her, out of the circle. She hands her a canteen of water and Klark drinks. Even with her arms stripped to the shoulders to allow for better movement, she worked up a sweat.

 

“ _Very_ good work,” another voice says, standing so close by Klark almost startles. “Or, a very good performance.”

 

Klark didn’t see the Commander among the spectators before the combat started. Maybe it was foolish of her to then assume the other girl wouldn’t appear at all -- this is Ice Nation business, though. Not the Coalition's, not the Woods Clan’s. So she doesn’t tamper down the spark of annoyance at the Commander’s tone as she bites out: “If you want to say something, just say it.”

 

The Commander raises an eyebrow. “I hope your opponents enjoyed the dramatics as much as I did.”

 

Klark’s pretty sure they did. They all knew what she was doing; they might not be her match, but that didn’t mean they weren’t all good fighters who recognized a better one. The older warriors had almost been smiling when they bowed their defeat, and that last one -- a younger girl, closer to Klark’s age... Echo, that was her name -- had outright winked. They _like_ that Klark is this good, and they also like that she sees the need for the... the observation of challenge. The ritual of it all. It’s important to have due process after decades of tyranny.

 

But again, this is Ice Nation business. Klark doesn’t expect an outsider to understand.  

 

“You’re one to talk,” she says. “I heard you give speeches before riding into battle.”

 

The Commander’s eyes widen, the only sign Klark scored a hit before she says: “Didn’t you break Nia’s bone crown over your knee in front of the whole camp?”

 

Klark whirls on her, nearly dropping the canteen. “Not all of us have ballads already sung about our victories in love _and_ war.”  

 

The Commander stiffens. “I have never lied about who I am, or who I -- or what I feel. What I am capable of.”

 

“So what are you saying?” Klark challenges, forcing down the urge to step right up to her face.

 

“You’ve done the pageantry, and well. Now show them the truth. Fight someone who can match you.”

 

Klark nearly rolls her eyes, contains herself at the last second. “The point of combat is to decide who rules the Ice Nation, you know.”

 

“So make it an informal fight. But they deserve to know exactly how good you are. _Who_ you are.”

 

“There isn’t a warrior among my people who can match me,” Klark answers, throwing it in her face.

 

“No?”

 

 _No_ , Klark doesn’t say, _because none of them have eaten well for years, they were kept on the edge of starvation to sharpen their desperation and fervor_. Not even: _no_ , _because if anyone became_ too _good, Nia would arrange for them to die in a battle rather than risk a challenge_. Definitely not: _no, because although I have twice as many as your clan in numbers, my warriors have half the cohesion and training_. _If that._

 

She’s had a lot of long nights discussing these things with Genai.

 

But that’s more of Ice Nation’s business and no one else’s. So she shakes her head.

 

The Commander hesitates. Her lips part, and Klark thinks she sees a flicker of tongue to wet them before she says: “So fight me.”

 

Genai has been standing just behind Klark, unobtrusive, this whole time. Klark can’t see her, but she can _feel_ her bodyguard’s head snap up at this.

 

“You?” Klark flounders. If this is some underhanded attempt to sneak her throne out from under her, if this arrogant southerner thinks she can --

 

“Informal combat, as promised. Only as an exhibition of your capabilities.” Something in the other girl’s eyes, a hint of something at odds with her near-expressionless mask. “Nothing more.”

 

Klark considers it. “I’ve fought six opponents already, it’s my disadvantage.”

 

“Well, I haven’t warmed up. And,” the Commander turns her head to take in the impromptu arena, “I’m unfamiliar with the terrain and climate.”

 

“You think that makes it fair?”

 

“As fair as it can be.”

 

“Fine.” Klark gives her a tight-lipped smile. “Ready yourself. I’ll meet you in the circle.”

 

“This is a bad idea,” Genai says as the Commander walks away.

 

Klark, finishing off the water, stops mid-swallow. “You don’t think she’d --”

 

“No. She can’t take your throne, not while your entry to the Coalition is in debate, and not like this.” Not in front of so many witnesses, is what Genai means. That was another late-night discussion for the two of them, when Klark finally thought to ask why so many clan leaders were travelling all this way into the North to see her crowned, instead of sending representatives to freeze and give polite smiles in their place. Genai had explained the naked truth of all the posturing: the Ice Nation, even in decline, is the only one of eleven that might hold its own against the Woods Clan. And Nia’s reign, for all of its viciousness, had an unexpected benefit: because their former queen hadn’t wanted to give a rival leader any kind of power over her, the Ice Nation doesn’t depend on extensive trading and cooperative agreements. That means if Klark _does_ reject the Coalition, the ten other clan leaders want to be on the scene. To see how the Commander deals with it, or to see if Klark is the one they will throw their support to, instead.

 

It’s not just about Ice Nation’s entry to the Coalition. If Klark refrains, it may dissolve the Coalition itself.

 

“You think she wants to make an example of me?” It doesn’t sound like anything Genai has told her about the Commander; a show of brute force, a bloody _beating_ , in response to resistance sounds more like Nia, of all people. Not that Klark is worried it might happen. A grin pulls at the side of her mouth. “Good luck to her.”

 

“You shouldn’t underestimate --” Genai stops mid-scold to scowl. “But no, that’s not it, either.”

 

“Then what?” Klark watches the older woman chew at her lip, deep in thought. “Genai, if you think I should, I’ll call it off.”

 

Genai stews for a moment longer before shaking her head. “Be careful.”

 

“Of what?” she asks, truly curious.

 

But Genai only shakes her head again. “Just... be careful.” Her gaze darkens, and Klark follows her line of sight to where Lexa is with her own bodyguard, a bearded mountain of a man whose glare Klark has felt more than once since their arrival. Currently that glare is directed at the Commander as she tries a few turns with her sword, working out the flex of her wrist. He says something to her -- Klark can see his mouth move, although she’s too far to hear -- but the young woman raises a hand in dismissal. She stops for a moment with one hand going to her neck. Gustus opens his mouth again, but quickly shuts it as the Commander unfastens her heavy cloak and tosses it in his direction. Her turns are easier after that, more fluid, but her bodyguard’s face is a stormcloud.

 

Klark looks back to Genai. Genai’s eyebrows are drawn tight together, pinching the skin between. “This is a bad idea,” she mutters again.

 

Klark turns to go before Genai can see her roll her eyes.

 

The Commander stands waiting for her in the circle of combat, stance loose and ready. The wind picks up, ruffling the fur at the collar and cuffs of her outfit and bringing color to her cheeks.

 

“Do you need a moment?” she calls across the space when she sees Klark watching. It draws the attention of the spectators, most of them in the middle of leaving. A murmur picks up as they realize what’s about to happen, and they flow back in like the tide.

 

“Do you?” Klark throws back. It’s a weak reply, she knows it, but she feels the eyes on her and needs to show no fear. She takes up her space at the opposite point in the circle, her striking knife in her right hand.

 

“Begin,” Genai calls from outside the circle, and they’re fighting.

 

The Commander is good.

 

Klark expected that, but... she’s very good.

 

Abi taught Klark to handle a sword -- _her_ sword -- but it never felt natural. Not like the knives. Abi gave them to her when she was eight, a birthday present: “These were your father’s.” Klark has worn them every minute of every day since. She brought down her first big game with them barely a year later, killed her first of Nia’s warriors a year after that. She has cut herself on them, more than once and sometimes badly, but they’ve never felt like anything less than an extension of herself.

 

She likes using them, in tandem or alone, in a fight. She likes the way they help her opponent to underestimate her -- she can always see it, the moment they take in her height and her weapon, the curl of their lip of the slight look of satisfaction on their face. She _loves_ to watch it morph into shock, and then anger, and finally fear, as she shows them just how stupid they were to think that skill lies in having the bigger blade.

 

The Commander isn’t doing that.

 

She’s testing Klark. She started off strong, of course, but now she’s escalating, bit by bit. Moving a little faster. Throwing a bit more weight into her blows. Making more and more of an honest effort to get past Klark’s guard.

 

Klark matches her each time. It’s an interesting challenge, watching for the shift in the Commander’s gaze and the movements of her shoulders, figuring out when she’s about to go harder. Being ready, being there and _waiting_ for her attacks half a breath before they happen.

 

It’s not like Abi’s training sessions where, once she was even better than her mother, Klark fought as much against whatever disadvantage Abi dreamed up (blindfold, one arm tied up, one arm and one _leg_ tied up) as the woman herself. It’s even different from the previous contenders today, who had been borderline deferential in their fights. This is like a conversation. An interrogation, and an answer. An argument, and then a retreat.

 

It’s almost. Fun.

 

Apparently the Commander doesn’t feel the same way, because she stops -- pulling back and dropping her guard so abruptly Klark stumbles to correct her lunge and refrain from accidentally beheading the leader of the Coalition.

 

Klark settles back, weight on the balls of her feet in readiness. The Commander is taking no such precaution. She’s out of range, but she’s out of stance. And she’s frowning.

 

“You’re holding back,” she says.

 

“ _You’re_ holding back,” Klark blurts out. She didn’t think in those terms until just now, but -- yes. That’s happening.

 

The Commander’s frown deepens. “Fine,” she says, as if to herself. “Fine,” she says again, turning on her heel and stalking off to meet her bodyguard, who hovers at the edge of the combat circle. Somehow Klark knows her intentions even before seeing her gesture for the sword on his back, and Klark herself is halfway to Genai.

 

“Give me the skinning knife,” she says. She can hear how breathless she sounds. She _feels_ it. She’s not sure why, the fight so far isn’t demanding.

 

Genai arms remain folded. “What did I tell you before? What did I say?”

 

“Oh, hush,” Klark snaps. She knows she’ll have to apologize later from the affronted look on the older woman’s face. But she can barely wait, she’s fumbling with excitement when she wrenches the second knife from her bodyguard’s grasp. Even in her impatience she’s almost too slow to put up her guard for the Commander, who  _throws_ herself across the intervening space with a roar.

 

There’s no more testing. Certainly no more of tentativeness.

 

It’s like fighting the storm itself. Klark still has nights where her dreams are filled with it. Her whole body remembers: the ache of its howling in her ears, the winds buffeting her on all sides. Fighting the Commander is like facing that same storm, now contained in -- or maybe surrounding -- the body of the other girl. Klark has fought opponents older, bigger, stronger. She’s fought to the _death_. But now, somehow, she’s struggling: caught on her back foot, raising her blade to defend. She pushes forward, striking when she can, first with concealed intent and then with growing recklessness, taking more risks each time.

 

At least Klark can hold her own. She’s used to fighting against a warrior with a sword, she knows how to work the weapon’s length into a disadvantage, cumbersome to wield at the necessary angle to strike at her. She can also use the sword’s weight against its wielder, directing its center of gravity with one knife while the other seeks to do real damage.

 

The Commander sees her coming and twists away. Their shoulders slam together, arms outstretched as each endeavors to keep the other from bringing their weapon in close. They’re locked like that for a long moment, perfectly matched in the struggle.

 

The Commander huffs a breath. Klark can feel the warmth of it along her cheek -- they’re that close.

 

Klark risks the splintering of her focus, brings her eyes up to the Commander’s face. The other girl meets them, and there’s a look there that is --

 

Klark becomes aware the warriors surrounding them are cheering, full-throated whoops and yells of approval, their excitement echoing against the empty sky. Klark wonders when they last saw a fight like this -- when was the last time two leaders of their clans met like this on the field and neither one was doomed for it.

 

Klark grins. The Commander doesn’t return it, but the corner of her mouth twitches a second before they break apart.

 

And with that, it’s a _game._

 

All the weight lifts, her unnamed anxieties flung out into the blue horizon. She has a sense of her screaming muscles, the cold beginning to enter her bones, but it’s burned away by the hot excitement in meeting each of the Commander's blows. They circle each other like twin stars, coming together and then apart, and it’s nothing like fighting Abi. It’s nothing like fighting for her life: against warriors twice her size sent to kill her, against Nia. Their differences make Klark and the Commander almost perfectly matched. What the Commander has in height and reach, Klark makes up in muscle. Where Klark looks to overwhelm her with the solid strength of each strike, their sheer quickness, the Commander eels out of her disadvantage with a cleverness Klark has never seen, an appraisal and calculation of Klark’s style which keeps her just out of reach.  

 

And from watching her, Klark is learning. She can begin to see how the Commander does it, and tries it for herself, tries to think of the Commander not only as an opponent but a person with likes, and dislikes, a mindset Klark can just begin to grasp --    

 

The next thing she knows she’s flat on her back on the hard ground, the sky stretching into infinity above her. She still has a knife in her right hand but her left is numb to the wrist, and as she heaves herself up and onto her elbows, she sees the Commander retiring one sword into a back sheath and using her free hand to pick up the knife she knocked away from Klark. When she sees Klark looking she stills, every line of her body tense as she readies herself for continuing battle.

 

Klark throws her head back to laugh.

 

She feels... good. She’s sore and winded and a little bit sour at being beaten in front of everyone, but... the way her heart is beating. She feels good. Maybe better than she ever has.

 

She’s alive. Others are not, but she _is_ , and for the first time in a long time, she feels it.

 

When Klark catches her breath the Commander is standing over her, her stance relaxed and her guard completely down. “Do you concede?” she asks. She’s fighting to keep that same corner of her mouth from lifting.

 

“I suppose.” Klark crosses her legs at the ankle. The gathered crowd will stay until the two of them leave, not wanting to miss a second of possible excitement, and she feels like making them wait. “I want a rematch. Not now, but,” she winces as a muscle in her lower back decides to complain, “maybe in a few years.”

 

“Maybe.” It doesn’t sound like empty words.

 

Klark takes a better look at the Commander. Her nose and cheeks are turning red, and the breeze has loosened pieces of her hair from meticulous braids. She doesn’t seem triumphant or overbearing where she continues to stand over Klark.

 

“It was an honor to defeat you, your Majesty,” she says. Her eyes are shining.

 

“You can call me by my name if you want.”

 

Klark hadn’t planned to make the offer. It feels natural in... whatever this is, this feeling, this moment.

 

The Commander’s eyes widen, and then she looks off into the distance. She’s running her thumb along the hilt of Klark’s knife, but Klark doesn’t think she’s aware of that.

 

“Thank you, but -- I can’t offer the same,” she says finally. She doesn’t look back at Klark, keeping her head high.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because there are some clan leaders whose tongues I’d rather remove than have address me with such familiarity,” Lexa returns. “And I can’t... show favoritism.” Klark watches her profile as she swallows, and adds, so softly it’s as if she’s not sure she wants to be heard: “Not in public.”

 

Klark hauls herself to her feet. “What if I promise to only use it when it’s just us?”

 

Finally, Lexa looks at her, eyes searching. “You don’t seem like someone comfortable with compromise.”

 

“It depends on who I’m compromising for. We’ll observe all the niceties in public, but if you’re going to make a habit of putting me on my back in front of my people, I get to call you _Lexa_ in private.” Klark reaches out, as if asking for her knife back. “Deal?”

 

Lexa passes it back to her, and for a moment her fingers circle Klark’s, press them in a brief squeeze. “Deal.”

 

* * *

 

 

“She beat me,” Klark says as she walks back to Genai, waiting for the _I warned you_. Except:

 

“There was no shame in it,” Genai says. She still doesn’t look _happy_ , but there’s a relaxation of the grooves around her mouth and the fine lines by her eyes that Klark has come to know means Genai is proud of her. “Very few can hold their own against a nightblood.”

 

Klark has no idea what that means, actually, but she’s too tired to ask Genai to explain. “She said I could call her Lexa,” she blurts out, still not in perfect control of herself after the high of combat, the rush of emotion when Lexa met her gaze and said exactly that.

 

If she expected Genai to be even prouder at this, she’s disappointed: the light in the older woman’s face dims. Slowly, as if with reluctance, Genai turns her head to look at the Commander, across the arena.

 

The other girl is getting what might be a tongue-lashing from her own bodyguard, given the expression on the man’s face. Lexa nods every now and then, or makes a calm reply to the inaudible torrent of his words. But her attention is on Klark -- she’d been looking over at Klark, it seems, and now their eyes meet. At this Lexa’s face brightens, and her features relax into the smallest of smiles.

 

“No,” Genai mutters. “No one here can say you didn’t show yourself to best advantage.”

 

She takes Klark’s arm and marches her off before Klark has time to wonder why she sounds so unhappy about it.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

“Don’t scratch,” comes the order from across the fire.

 

Klark seethes, settling deeper into her fur-lined coat. She hadn’t even moved yet, she’d only _thought_ about maybe turning so that the light of the fire fell on the other side of her face, maybe rubbing her healing tattoo against the rough surface of the log at her back... “It itches.”

 

“And if you scratch, it will heal unevenly.” The Commander is absorbed in minor maintenance to her sword. “Then your people will know their new queen cannot withstand the slightest discomfort.”

 

Klark lets her head fall back against the log with a muffled thud. She’s right, of course. Not about _slightest discomfort_ \-- Klark lived sixteen years of her life in the barrens and she’s tempted to remind this soft southerner what discomfort really means -- but she’ll look ridiculous, outlawing scarification only to mess up her own face.

 

The tattooing had taken up most of the morning. It was fine throughout the day when the chill in the air kept her skin numb, but the warmth of the fire has an unexpected drawback. It feels like bugs crawling just beneath her skin. She squeezes her eyes shut, but can’t help a small whimper.

 

The Commander sighs. “Try patting your palm against it. Gently.”

 

Klark does so, careful to use the leather section of her gloves. The skin protests at any added sensation and she winces at the sting, but it helps.

 

“Thank you,” she says after relief sets in.

 

“I remember my first tattoo,” the Commander says after, if it were half a second longer and coming from anyone else, what Klark might mistake for a hesitation. “I was prepared for pain. It was what came after that surprised me.”

 

Abi had always said that healing pain was the worst kind. Klark squeezes her eyes shut and pats at her tattoo again so that the grimace can be mistaken for itch. “How did you earn yours?”

 

Klark knows they’re not here to trade these stories. She can’t sleep, what with her face, and the Commander spotted her and Genai (who now sits a polite distance off) at the fire long after everyone else has gone to bed. She’s here to press the Coalition without an audience.

 

But they’re both pretending. It’s easier after their fight cleared the air. Klark, anyway, can look across the fire and see a person, not a potential enemy.

 

Well, not just that.

 

“The last Commander lived longer than anyone expected. He decided the nightbloods ought to be given out as Seconds, like any other Woods Clan warrior, instead of simply waiting for the conclave.” The Commander’s tone is empty when she says this. It’s impossible to tell her opinion of this decision, whether she was glad for it or not.

 

Oh, so that’s what Woods Clan calls their contenders for the throne: nightbloods. Quite a few clans eschew inherited power, and of course all of them have rituals and challenges that can supercede it. She wonders what kind of questions and interrogation Lexa endured in this "conclave," to be picked from all the rest. “Commander Darg. My mother mentioned him.”

 

“Oh?” The current Commander doesn’t look up from the naked blade balanced on her knees. “What did she say?”

 

“That he only lived so long because he was in the pocket of half a dozen other clan leaders. Including Nia.”

 

“Well,” lightly, “historically, that has yielded the best results.”

 

Klark’s cheek itches, and she pats it again. “How did he die?”

 

“Asleep in bed. We think it was poison. The conclave was called, and I ascended. But not before I earned this,” and she places one finger across her bicep, where Klark imagines a design beneath the thick layers of protective clothing, “in a skirmish with Broadleaf. It wasn’t my first battle, or my first kill, but afterward my First decided I had distinguished myself enough to take a mark. She allowed for one more before my Ascension Day, where --”

 

“How old were you?”

 

The Commander pauses. “Fourteen for the first mark, fifteen for the next.”

 

“No, I meant -- when you became Commander.”

 

The Commander straightens a little, reaches for her sword’s sheath. “Sixteen.”

 

“That’s my age.”

 

The blade finds its way home with a _snickt_. “Yes.”

 

And it had only taken her two years to make a clan a force to be feared again, to bring together almost all the rest in unity.

 

Klark’s not threatened. She’ll do even better. She’ll make it her mission to. “If one of the older clan leaders had come to you then, and asked you to submit your power to theirs, would you have done it?”

 

“I’m not that much older than you.”

 

“Okay. What if an eighteen-year-old Nia --”

 

“I am _not_ Nia.”

 

“No, but you’re an enemy. Or you have been.” Klark lets her head roll to the side so that she’s looking straight at the Commander. “You’re the one who has hunted and captured my warriors for years. Don’t try to deny it.”

 

“I wasn’t going to.”

 

“You’ve stolen from us. You’ve cut off our resources when it served you. Nia hurt us because she neglected her duty. Hurting us has _been_ your duty.” The Commander’s expression grows stonier and stonier as Klark talks, but she doesn’t protest. “How,” Klark asks her, “can I pledge fealty to you now, and then promise my people they will be safe?”

 

The Commander leans her elbows onto her knees, her face turned toward the fire. The flames lend a soft glow to her features and the hollow of her neck. “You wish the conflict between our clans to continue? You think that will make your people happy, or prosperous?”

 

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child,” Klark snaps. “There are options besides my submission and open war.”

 

“But they will take time.” The Commander’s face is drawn up tight with the strain of keeping herself in check. Klark can almost _see_ the way she wants to scowl or shout, the imminent explosion lurking within. “And the Coalition cannot waste a second of it. Not if we ever hope to win against the Mountain.”

 

“My clan does not fear the Mountain.”

 

The Commander stares at her.

 

“We’re out of their reach. Not even their attacks from the air truly threaten us. If the Mountain Men struggle with survival in _your_ territory, there’s no hope for them in ours.” She pauses, but the Commander does not give a rebuttal. “We have nothing but time.”

 

“You hope that if you wait your problems will solve themselves. Either the united clans will succeed against the Mountain, or they will succeed in their efforts, leaving your people in peace.” The other girl gives a mirthless smile. “A cold strategy for a cold queen.”

 

“As opposed to making friends of old enemies just so you can ask them to fight your war?”

 

“It’s not --” The Commander breaks off, looking away. “The Mountain may not target your people or your territory,” she bites out, “but don’t mistake that for acceptance. Their hatred of us is not like the hatred between warriors or warring clans, or even the hatred you might feel for someone who personally owes you blood.” The shadows from the firelight are deeper at this angle, carving out the hollows of her cheeks and the shallow recesses of her skull. “We are _animals_ to them. They drain us of blood to cure their own sickness, or they poison our minds so that we turn on our own without mercy. They cower in the dark surrounded by wonders, weapons of incredible power, and they wipe out whole villages should one of us try and use such wonders to defend ourselves. They --”

 

“I understand the dangers of the Mountain.”

 

“Then why don’t you understand that we must fight it?” The Commander shifts until she’s on the ground, at Klark’s level and on her knees, her tone close to pleading. “Why did you fight your way through the barrens, and then fight _Nia_ , if all you want is to bury your head in the snow? Why become a queen in the first place?”

 

Klark looks at her. There’s an edge of desperation to the Commander where she kneels, hands clenched into fists, eyes intent on Klark’s face. She looks half-wild.   

 

She’s also the closest to human than Klark has ever seen her, which is perhaps why she confesses: “I almost didn’t.”

 

It feels like something that should crack open the sky and bring down an angry spirit to punish her for doubting her destiny. Probably her mother’s.

 

But the Commander doesn’t flinch away. She holds Klark’s gaze, and although there’s no pity in them, no softness, there is something that says: _tell me_.

 

“When my mother died,” and here she hiccups a short breath, a spasm as she says it out loud for the first time: _my mother is dead_. The air is cold, even this close to the fire. “I wanted to die, too. I hated her, sometimes, for dragging us out into the middle of nothingness, for training me and teaching me every day, and saying it was all for me. Like it was my fault. She made all these choices that ruined our lives, and then she died. It felt like the end of the world. It _was_ ,” she corrects herself. “It was the end of the only world I knew.”

 

The Commander sits back on her heels. Her expression is still intent, still fixed on Klark, but there’s a measure of reflection to it.

 

“I didn’t go out into the storm because I thought it was my destiny,” Klark continues. “I just wanted it to be over. Either I would reach the Ice Court, or I wouldn’t. I think part of me hoped I wouldn’t. I know it did,” she finishes, very softly.

 

“But you survived. And when Nia tried to kill you, you fought back. You killed her.”

 

“I made a mess of that, too,” Klark admits. “It was an accident. Not killing her, but... I was taught to kill cleanly and quickly, but I was tired -- I was _exhausted_ \-- and I. Slipped. My knife went into her lung, not her heart.”

 

The Commander nods, once. Klark has no doubt she’s seen that kind of death, the ugliness of it. “You could have given her mercy.”

 

“No.” No killing blow for the woman who murdered Klark’s father, who tried to murder Klark as a baby, who had hunted Klark and her mother for years. “I wanted her to suffer. I wanted to watch.”

 

Like she had watched Abi suffer.

 

“Did that make you feel better?”

 

And that is what makes the tears come. Of all things. “No,” Klark gasps, tilting her head back against the log to look up at the night sky. The stars are glittering swathes pricked out of the darkness, and she decides the tears that slip out from her eyes and into her hair are nothing compared to the vastness of the world surrounding them. “It didn’t make me feel better. I realized nothing would. I could only...”

 

“Yes?” A gentle prompt when her words trail off.

 

“What was lost was _gone_ ,” Klark chokes out. “All I could do was be the kind of queen who would build a new world. One where, maybe one day, no one would ever feel like this again.” She raises her head to look at the Commander. “That thought was -- it is -- the only thing that makes me feel better.”

 

The Commander’s head dips, and Klark can see her shoulders raise with a deep breath.

 

“But that’s exactly why I can’t fight your war.” She expects that to bring the Commander’s head up, to look at her again, but the other girl doesn’t twitch. Klark wonders why she feels disappointed not to have those eyes on her again. “Think of how many people suffered, and for how many years, because Nia put her own power or safety above her people’s welfare. Think of how she failed the realm because of the time and resources she poured into looking for _me_. I agree with you, the Mountain is dangerous,” she says, and _still_ the Commander doesn’t look at her, “but the last thing my people need is to fight yet another war.”

 

“It isn’t just about the Mountain.”

 

Klark hesitates, then sits up straighter, certain she’s misheard. “What?”

 

“The Coalition.” Finally, finally, the Commander raises her head. She looks... for the first time Klark feels like she’s looking at a girl, just another girl like her, and not too far off in age. “The Mountain must be defeated. But the importance of the Coalition is far greater than the one goal.” She sighs. “My family was slaughtered by Ice Nation raiders. Did you know?”

 

Klark knows. It was a very important part of Genai’s debriefings, a looming shadow casting the doubt that the Commander could ever deal with their clan fairly, despite everything. She nods.

 

“I had as much reason to want Nia’s death as you did.”

 

Klark frowns. “Are you saying... I owe you a death, or..?”

 

“No.” Is that a hint of a smile on the Commander’s face before she shakes her head? “Nia was yours. I only mention it because -- because I know what it feels like to lose the only world you have ever known. To realize it must happen, day after day after day, for others elsewhere. The Mountain has taken so much from us. But we have also taken from each other. Our way of life has only one, inevitable end.”

 

“So it’s more than an alliance. It’s the beginning of an empire.” Realization comes slow but certain as Klark continues: “You want the Mountain, but you want us to come together and _stay_ together -- all the clans united under your leadership.”

 

Lexa opens her mouth and then closes it, carefully. “It doesn’t have to be my leadership. Not indefinitely. But as the Coalition was the result of my actions, I don’t see why I shouldn’t retain it for now.” There’s a slightly arrogant lift to her chin as she says it, but she continues with: “Afterward, if the clans can be persuaded to remain in accord... that matters more than who shall reign over it.”

 

The Commander keeps her own eyes on the fire, as if hesitant to meet Klark’s after exposing some secret part of herself. Almost as if she’s... shy.

 

“This is very important to you,” Klark says, because she’s not good at holding back.

 

Lexa draws in a deep breath. “Do you see an alternative?” she asks, instead of addressing the question. “Between this, and mutual destruction?”

 

“There’s always a winner in a fight.”

 

“But will it be my clan?” Lexa counters. “Or yours? Perhaps some unknown power will rise up out of the desert and slaughter us all unawares.” She meets Klark’s eyes across the fire. “Are you willing to take that chance?

 

Klark considers it.

 

It’s simple, really. Safety and prosperity now, but an uncertain future. Or a calculated gamble: betting everything at hand, knowing at least she will not be alone in taking the risk.

 

If she were a better queen, maybe, she would play it safer.

 

But that queen never would have walked into the storm.

 

“Alright. I’ll be a part of your Coalition.”

 

Klark expects a smile in return -- maybe even a grin. She hasn’t really seen Lexa smile yet, but she feels like she deserves to after this concession.

 

Lexa doesn’t smile.

 

The realization of the victory she’s just been given comes over her slowly. Klark can watch as it loosens the tenseness of her shoulders, unclenches the fists on her knees. It straightens her back and raises her head, and then flows over the features of her face like water: happiness, and yes, gratitude.

 

For a moment, Lexa _shines_.

 

Klark has to look away and into the fire, heart twisting in her chest.

 

She doesn’t know how to deal with... she’d rather be fighting, almost.

 

“In return,” keeping her tone light and easy, “I expect you to take the fall the next time we spar for an audience.”

 

Lexa is very warm in response. “I don’t believe a false victory would satisfy you for one moment.”

 

Klark scowls and pushes her chin deeper into her coat. Lexa’s right. Damn her. “Then I will carry the humiliation of defeat on both counts.”

 

“You fought well.”

 

“Not well enough. All that training, and for nothing.”

 

“Not for nothing. Your mother taught you to survive, no matter what. If it had been a fight to the death, you would have -- considering where you were when I disarmed you, you would have been able to get away. You only surrendered because it wasn’t a true fight.”

 

“Weren’t you taught the same?”

 

“No. I was taught to win.”

 

Klark would press her on the difference -- she’s not sure she understands what that changes -- but the grimness of the Commander’s tone keeps her silent.

 

“Your mother loved you very much,” the Commander offers after a minute. “I heard of you, you know. The prophecy of the girl who might defeat Nia. Years ago.”

 

“How?”

 

The Commander’s eyes fly to her face, and she looks almost... guilty. “A friend,” she says after a moment.

 

Klark settles back against her log. “I know you had spies in this territory. You don’t have to pretend otherwise.”

 

“Then I won’t.” The Commander also makes herself more comfortable on the ground. “Yes, I had spies. One of them liked to tell me about the girl who made it difficult for Nia to rest easy at night.”

 

Oh, but that’s a sweet thought. Klark doubts it’s true, but it eases something still hard and tight in her chest, to think she troubled Nia’s sleep.

 

But the Commander has Klark at a disadvantage, because Woods Clan leadership was not something Abi had felt important enough to dwell on.

 

No, wait, there was something Klark has heard stories about -- from Genai, though. The bodyguard stressed this issue before. Not how it could be dealt with, just that it needed to be.

 

“The Shadow-walker is yours, isn’t she?” Klark asks.

 

Klark has been caught between admiration and chagrin since hearing about the Shadow-walker: the agent who worked in the cover of darkness and moved with a swiftness that bordered on inhuman, leaving silent deaths and ruin in her wake. Her warriors showed Klark the arrows they’d cut from the throats of Nia’s soldiers, the singular fletchings that made sure everyone knew the identity of their killer even though no one had seen her face. They hadn’t even been able to assure Klark it was a woman, but Klark is fairly certain. The focus on not just thwarting Nia’s efforts but humiliating her in the process, the slow tightening of a noose over years and years of effort -- it all seems like a woman’s revenge, even if Klark doesn’t know for what.

 

But Nia is dead, and the Shadow-walker is Klark’s problem, now.

 

There isn’t as much as a flicker of reaction across Lexa’s face. “You seem sure of it.”

 

It’s a common suspicion. The Woods Clan is not their nearest neighbors, but they have the resources and the reasons to allow for that level of sabotage. And then there have been reports of Ice Nation refugees turning up in remote Woods Clan territory, after the petty warlords who turned their villages into all but slave camps were found strung up and sliced open.

 

Klark has known for certain since the moment Lexa stepped off the boat and clasped her forearm in greeting. Not many rulers are strong enough to hold that kind of power in their command and not abuse it. Fewer still command the loyalty that means such a fierce, skilled warrior -- with such an obvious sense of justice -- wouldn’t turn on them in the end. One look at the Commander, the way she held her head and met Klark’s eyes, and Klark knew who had the leash of the Shadow-walker.

 

But she doesn’t say any of that now. She’s pretty sure Lexa doesn’t need the boost to her ego -- and Klark is still not sure she would want to be the one to give it. So she only holds the other girl’s gaze.

 

“And if she is?” Lexa finally continues, after long minutes where the only sound is the snap of burning wood and pops of the flames consuming them. They both know the fact she speaks first is an acknowledgement.

 

“If I’m in your Coalition, then we are allies. Allies do not send spies into each other’s territory. Not ones like the Shadow-walker, anyway.”

 

She thinks Lexa looks oddly... fond? No, it has to be the play of shadows over her face distorting her features. “You assume she works under my direction.”

 

“She doesn’t?”

 

“It’s more like my suggestion,” Lexa says drily. “Someone like that, they’d be very difficult to command.”

 

“Ask her, then. Not to come into my territory any more, not to continue her war against Nia with _me_.”

 

Again, Lexa’s expression is an odd one. Surely she expected something like this -- what reason does she have to look so... so apprehensive?

 

“Please,” Klark is compelled to ask.

 

Lexa nods.

 

That’s all she can ask for, in the end. Klark doesn’t push it, instead allowing the suddenly somber silence between them. She finds herself blinking in and out of sleep, lulled by the itch of her tattoo and Lexa’s steady presence.

  
Some time later Genai shakes her awake and reminds her of the perfectly nice, perfectly _warm_ bed waiting for her in her tent. When Klark looks around the fire, Lexa has already left.

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, hey, remember this?
> 
> One story in five parts, updating Tuesdays and Thursdays.  
> .  
> Special thanks to blindwire and meetwickedfaith for support and typo patrol


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

* * *

 

 

The penultimate day of coronation festivities is one of the busiest. Klark spends it in multiple audiences, listening to petitioners both foreign and domestic. Other clans present their proposals for trade, knowledge exchange, entrepreneurial ventures. Nia’s warlords come to her, usually on their knees, begging for a chance to show they can contribute to the new regime. She lets most of them leave on their own two feet.

 

Most of them.

 

The other clan leaders will leave after tomorrow’s ceremony; it’s only polite after taking advantage of her generosity as host for the past few days. Lexa plans to stay longer, she informed Klark of that when she arrived -- which she did early. Rules are meant to be broken for the leader of the Coalition, it seems. Klark finds she doesn’t mind it as much as she once did.

 

It makes sense to prioritize all of her other duties, and she doesn’t see Lexa until that evening’s feast. It’s the biggest yet in terms of numbers. No one is refused a seat at this meal. They use Nia’s hall -- now Klark’s -- and fill it with long tables. When that doesn’t do the trick they string up tents outside, drag out metal braziers and light fires to keep everyone warm. Klark feels like she’s at the center of an ember, glowing and alive.  

 

At one point Lexa stands. She doesn’t say anything -- she doesn’t have to -- but the action causes silence and attention to cascade through the hall until reaches Klark across the great room. She looks up to find Lexa’s eyes on her, the Commander’s cup raised in the air.

 

“Drink with me, your Majesty,” Lexa says, as if there weren’t so much space and people between them.

 

“To the future,” Lexa says. “One we will share as leaders united.”

 

There’s a breath before the impact of her words hit and ripple outward. Most seem relieved to hear the Coalition will have a new member, some even very happy. There are a few cloudy faces, here and there, and Klark sees one shorter figure get up and leave the hall -- one of the younger warriors, she thinks, with her long hair swinging.

 

But most of Klark’s attention is on Lexa, still holding her cup aloft and waiting.

 

Klark rises to her feet, ignoring Genai’s dark look, catching her own cup into her hand. The hall falls silent.

 

“To the future,” Klark calls back to Lexa, sensing her cue. “And a very dramatic one, I’m sure.”

 

Klark lifts her cup quickly to her lips to cover her grin. But she thinks Lexa catches it, from the glint in her eye.

 

“Relax, Genai,” Klark says as she sits back down.

 

“I didn’t say anything.”

 

“You didn’t have to.” Klark reaches across the table to spear something from a serving dish. “It was going to come out anyway. What does it matter if people know tonight, or tomorrow morning?”

 

The bodyguard doesn’t respond, but she’s unusually quiet for the remainder of the meal, and excuses herself before Klark decides to retire. That’s fine -- Klark has other guards -- but it leaves her feeling surly.

 

It’s not an excuse, but it’s an explanation for why it takes her so long to acknowledge the warrior who approaches her elbow later, clearly waiting for her attention. She can tell by his face he has news she’s not going to enjoy, and for long minutes (minutes she hates herself for, later) she ignores him. This is supposed to be her night, and her last night of pure enjoyment before taking the metaphorical crown -- and Genai has already spoiled it a little. But the guilt weighs in her gut until she finally turns to him and snaps: “What?”

 

At this, her remaining bodyguards allow him to approach. He steps in close to whisper that what he has to say, she might not want overheard.

 

They leave the brightness and comfort of the hall for privacy outside. The winds are relatively calm, and so the cold isn’t as biting, even with sheets of stars replacing the sun overhead.

 

“Your Majesty,” the man says, his voice hoarse with emotion, “the fosterlings are missing.”

 

* * *

 

Klark hates the fosterlings.

 

Not _them_. Not the children -- and that’s what most of them are, babes barely out of arms -- but the fact of them. The fact they have been her responsibility since Nia’s last breath left her body in a bloody, wracking cough.

 

She met them as soon as she learned of them: that Nia had _collected_ children, keeping them close to her and away from their families as an awful kind of collateral against disobedience from the leaders of farther-flung or more dissenting villages. Partly because Klark felt they deserved to know, as soon as possible, that their lives would no longer continue in this beastly manner. Partly because she wondered if she was, in a twisted way, responsible -- if Nia had learned not to threaten a child directly after observing the lengths that parents like Abi would then take.

 

“What do you mean, missing?” she asks. Her lips feel numb -- could be the cold, could be all that she drank at the feast. Could be the feeling of something awful settling its weight on her shoulders, yet another burden to bear.

 

“They went to sleep early,” the guard says. His face is drawn and haggard. “Young children sometimes believe that the next day will come quicker that way and they... they were very happy to be returned to their parents with the end of your coronation, tomorrow.”

 

Her stomach clenches.

 

“The guards to their hall changed in the evening, as always,” he continues. “But there is a signal sent at the beginning of each new shift as a precaution. It never came. When I went to check I found the guards were dead, and the fosterlings were gone.”

 

“Could they have left on their own?” Klark turns to see Lexa step out of the light spilling from an open doorway and deeper into the shadows with them. “Perhaps they weren’t as eager for a reunion as you thought.”

 

“No, Commander. They are... very young. Even if I was mistaken, there’s no way the children could have taken on two blooded warriors.”

 

“Do you have any suspects?” Lexa asks. She comes to stand by Klark, and then Klark feels Lexa’s hand press against her lower back. Klark doesn’t think anyone else can catch the gesture -- the heavy, draping furs of the other girl’s winter wear obscures small movements. She allows herself to relax back into the support.

 

“Too many to name and still have time to ride out after them, Commander.”

 

Lexa considers this. Klark watches her face. In another moment, maybe, she’ll have time to scold herself for this feeling of... dependency, of needing someone else’s help to see a way clear of disaster. Right now the buzz of panic inside her brain leaves her with no other option.

 

“Go back to your post,” the Commander orders the guard. “Tell no one of what happened. It could cause a panic among the guests.”

 

“But --”

 

“ _Think_ ,” Lexa hisses at him. “A strike against your future queen, of this magnitude, _hours_ before she’s finally crowned? Whoever did this wants it to be known. This is a desperate attempt to sow discord and undermine the trust your people have placed in her. _Is that what you want_?”

 

Klark watches as the guard pales. She also watches at Lexa’s warriors, only a short distance away, put their hands on their weapons in readiness at their Commander’s tone.

 

But the guard is already shaking his head. “No.”

 

“So do as I say,” Lexa says, gentler. “Go back to your post, and continue your night as if nothing has happened.”

 

“Now what?” Klark asks Lexa as the he leaves. She hates how pleading she sounds, but she can’t help it. “What do we do?”

 

Lexa searches her face, a short line of concern between her eyebrows. “Wait,” she says, and steps away to speak with her guards.

 

Klark watches, her hands wringing together. She wishes Genai was here. But it’s not so bad. With just Lexa.

 

She shivers as Lexa returns, the snow crunching beneath her boots. Her guards have already dispersed, and there’s no one to see the way she reaches for the neck of Klark’s outer jacket where the ties have come loose. So Klark allows it.

 

“I’m fine,” she says as the other girl begins to thread the ties back into place, drawing them tighter. “I’m not cold, I -- what do we _do_?”

 

“Nothing.” Lexa keeps her eyes on her hands as their do their careful work.

 

Klark stumbles backwards, away from the Commander. Whose eyes, when they meet Klark’s hold resigned sadness.

 

“What,” she says, her breath coming faster, “what did you tell your warriors?”

 

“You can’t pursue this,” Lexa says instead of answering the question. “If you rally tonight, everyone will know. It will be the same as if that guard decided to cry the alarm.”

 

“So someone else can go.”

 

“The result will be the same.” Lexa’s shoulders bunch in stubbornness. “And we have no idea who’s behind this, if they _mean_ to draw us out -- there could be an even greater force waiting to descend on whoever pursues the fosterlings, or this encampment, once you or a portion of your warriors have left it. It’s too dangerous. You can’t take the risk.”

 

“You won’t _allow_ me to take it.”

 

Her head dips, but her jaw is set. “No.”

 

“Who do you think you are? You can’t command me --”

 

“I can. That’s what it means now that you’ve declared your intentions to join my Coalition. You will swear fealty to me, Klark of the Ice Nation. If you didn’t know what that meant before now...” Her mouth draws up tight. “Your horse and those of your warriors have been set under my people’s guard. If you attempt to defy me I will discover it. I don’t think either of us want that,” she finishes quietly.

 

“Lexa, please,” Klark whispers. It’s a last-ditch effort, a show of humility that makes the skin on the back of her neck crawl, but she needs to chance it, because: “They’re children.”

 

“Exactly,” Lexa says. She straightens, the tilt of her head like it carries an old weariness. “And you are a queen.”

 

She turns, going back inside the hall and leaving Klark alone in the snow.

 

* * *

 

 

Klark doesn’t have much experience with horses. They don’t survive on the barrens -- not even the stocky, thick-coated kind bred for hardiness and the northern climate. But she’s spent whatever time she has since arriving at the Ice Court learning how to ride, keenly aware that falling off a horse is one of those things she should avoid in front of foreign visitors.

 

Of course she can admit, now, that “foreign visitors” really meant the Commander -- meant _Lexa_. Klark can blame the look on Genai’s face whenever she told Klark stories of the other girl’s accomplishments, her tone shading towards awe. Or Klark can blame herself, for leaning into the competitive edge she first felt in those moments, which only sharpened once she met Lexa for herself. She’s still not completely sure about the why of it, but she can at least admit now, and here: Lexa has always been someone Klark wanted to impress.

 

Stealing her horse and sneaking off the camp with it probably _isn’t_ the way to do that. But Klark has already committed.

 

The horse doesn’t like or trust Klark, that’s clear. But its guard was one of the few that hadn’t received specific instructions that Klark wasn’t to be let near it -- clearly Lexa didn’t even consider that Klark would _dare_ \-- and so it’d been easy to send him away on a pretense, promising to watch his charge while he's gone.

 

... could she have chosen a different horse? Yes.

 

She didn’t.

 

But Klark doesn’t need Lexa’s horse to be the easiest to handle or the most responsive, she just needs to get far enough beyond that camp that she won’t be spotted, and then circle around until she finds the tracks of half a dozen children and whoever has led them off.

 

To that person’s credit, the tracks aren’t so easy to find. Maybe it would be closer to impossible for anyone else -- but in the barrens the ground is frozen solid, the undergrowth negligible, and Klark had to learn to spot the faintest signs of passage and movement. Sometimes it meant the difference between dinner and another long, cold night of hunger.

 

She follows the tracks as the moon rises. It’s a clear night, and soon she doesn’t need to dismount to search. Or maybe whoever she’s following grew cockier as they got farther from camp, or perhaps weighed the value of speed over secrecy once they judged their plot had been uncovered. They couldn’t have guessed the Commander would forbid pursuit.

 

(Klark knows _she’s_ being pursued. They’re not close enough for her to see them, not even along the flat plains, but every now and again she hears the echo of their horses’ hooves, a fragment of a shouted command. She uses her skills to keep ahead, keep unseen. It’s not the first time she’s been hunted while on a hunt of her own.)

 

In the end it’s Lexa’s horse that finds them, pulling on the reins as its ears swivel for something Klark wasn’t paying attention to. She brings them both to a halt to listen: the wuffling, rumbling noises of horses put to feed after a long haul. She lets the horse carry them to the others, driven by its longing for rest and treats.

 

The other horses are unguarded, sheltered beneath an outcropping of rock and tied together with leading strings -- probably the same the kidnapper used to guide them when transporting the children. All but one of them lacks saddle or reins, forcing their riders to cling to the horse’s coat or each other or face falling from its back at a gallop. Klark puts Lexa’s horse among them and gives it the feed bag from one of other horses that is already beginning to doze after a hard ride.

 

She creeps around the side of the rock face, soft on the balls of her feet. It’s quiet here as the rock splits, opens up into caves and crevasses, but every disturbed pebble has an echo that carries. The ceremonial jacket Genai stuffed her into earlier that day has a few too many jingling pieces -- Klark sheds it. It’s calming to feel the night breezes along her bare arms, to remember she has gone up against far worse than a coward who steals children, and survived.

 

“You’ll get yourself killed.”

 

Klark has to bite down on her lip to keep from shouting in surprise. She registers whose voice it is as she turns, and that’s the only thing that spares Lexa’s life. Klark sheathes she knife she already had half-drawn.

 

Lexa is smart -- she kept out of immediate striking range, tucking herself up against the rock face a few feet away. The shadow from it leaves most of her face in darkness, but the set of her mouth is clear enough.

 

“How did you --”

 

“We were too loud in a group, you could evade us too easily. I told the others to fall back and wait for my signal.” They’re both keeping their voices low, barely above a murmur. “And I thought it best they not see when I drag you by the scruff of your neck.”

 

Outrage spikes hot in Klark’s gut, but only for a second before she bares her teeth at the Commander. “I’d like to see you try it.”

 

Lexa opens her mouth, but the night is pierced by a brief, infantile wail. It’s smothered a second later, but the echoes linger. Lexa steps out fully into the moonlight, and the shocked, stricken look on her face cools whatever lingering antagonism Klark felt.

 

“Don’t signal for backup yet,” Klark tells her.

 

Lexa marshals her expression into her usual composure. “You have no idea what we’re going up against. You have no right to risk --”

 

“If we give ourselves away, whoever this is could disappear into the network of caves underneath these rocks. We could use dozens of teams searching for years, and never find them.”

 

“They wouldn’t be able to escape, either.”

 

“True. They’d starve first.” She stares Lexa down. “And maybe whatever child they snatch up before running starves with them.” She lets that sink in before adding: “They will never hear or see me coming. Just let me get close enough to know who or what we’re dealing with.”

 

She watches Lexa wrestle with it. It was one thing to play it safe back at the camp, to err on the side of caution and try and keep Klark from danger. But Klark -- she can’t say she knows Lexa, not this soon. But she _feels_ her, somehow, and she knows Lexa is not the kind of person to turn back now. Not when they’ve come this far, and victory dangles just out of reach. Lexa might be cautious, and careful, and those things might shape her -- but Klark already knows what drives her is justice.

 

“Swear to me,” Lexa says finally, her face turned away, and Klark’s heart soars even before she continues with: “that you will be careful. Swear to me if I let you do this, you will take no steps without conferring with me first.”

 

“I swe-”

 

“Swear on your fealty to me.”

 

Klark’s mouth dries up as Lexa turns to meet her eyes. The sharp look in them might as well be a knife held to her throat.

 

“I swear,” she whispers.

 

* * *

 

 

The kidnapper is smart. She couldn’t corral all the fosterlings at one time, but Klark can see she didn’t have to. She just had to grab the youngest and smallest of them -- a little girl whose parents’ territory is in the deep North, the last habitable sliver of land before it meets the dark sea -- and the rest fell in line. Klark shouldn’t be surprised. Ripped from their families, cloistered at court, it was only natural for the fosterlings to bond with each other. She wishes she’d anticipated how someone like the kidnapper might take advantage of it.

 

She realizes, creeping close to the shallow cave where the children are huddled, that she’s seen the kidnapper before. She can’t place exactly when, most probably during one of Genai’s sweeps where she pointed to everyone in sight and rattled off a name -- Oronto? No: Ontari. A dark-haired, dark-eyed girl, with Nia’s scars on her face and the look of someone whose inner world was very, very far away from wherever she was standing.

 

Maybe Klark should have paid more attention to that. But it wasn’t an uncommon look among Nia’s former soldiers, especially those of her innermost circle. Klark had pitied her -- pitied all of them. Had thought they, more than anyone, would understand why Klark had to be Queen.

 

“She isn’t coming for you,” she can hear Ontari tell the children. “Stop snivelling.”

 

None of them are crying -- Klark thinks they look too tired for that, as she inches forward on her belly -- but some of the youngest are fussing, either because of cold or hunger. The oldest are doing their best to comfort whoever’s in distress, while sending less than charitable looks Ontari’s way.

 

“You were only tokens in a game to her,” Ontari continues. “She was using you for your parents’ loyalty.”

 

“She said we could go home,” says the little girl in Ontari’s lap, with Ontari’s dagger aimed at her side.

 

Klark is close enough to see Ontari’s grip on the youngest fosterling tighten, but the little girl doesn’t cry out. “Well now you can’t,” Ontari responds, harsh. “Now none of us can go home.”

 

“Where are we going?” asks one of the older boys.

 

“Wherever I say,” Ontari hisses. “And you’ll follow me, or you’ll die out here in the wasteland. I’m your queen, now.”

 

... Klark has never considered herself particularly good at winning people over -- she’d rather beat them into submission, usually -- but wow, Ontari is _really_ not good at it.

 

But that reminds Klark.

 

It’s easy to find the size and shape of the stone she wants.  The hard part is getting the angle from her position: literally on the ground. Every shift sends smaller pebbles rustling and whispering, and the way she’s holding her sling makes a sharp pain radiate from her elbow. She drops her stone with her first attempt, which hasn’t happened since she was _seven_ . But the second try launches it through the air, landing square against Ontari’s cheekbone with a _crack_ Klark can hear across the distance.

 

Ontari screams. The fosterlings haven’t been political prisoners for this long to neglect an instinct for survival and quick thinking -- several hands reach out to yank the youngest of their group out of the Ontari’s lap, and they’re running in the next breath. They freeze when they see Klark, rising to her knees with a blade already in hand.

 

She uses it to point where she came from. “The Commander is over by those rocks. More of her soldiers are on the way. _Go_.”

 

Klark doesn’t need to tell them twice, but when she looks back Ontari is already gone.

 

She curses, leaning into the cave to look for telltale marks of escape deeper into the caverns -- but no, Ontari seems to have fled out into the night rather than be cornered in the endless dark. Klark is _glad._  She wants Ontari for herself, she’s discovering. There’s a low, hungry heat building at the pit of her stomach, and it wants to drag Ontari back to the Ice Court by her hair.

 

She’s picturing it as she follows the trail up onto the cliffs above. The air feels thinner here, colder, frozen pinpricks of snowflakes falling on her face, just as something strikes the back of her head.

 

Klark’s ears ring as her knees hit the ground. This close to the sky, she can almost hear the gods laughing at her for being so stupid.

 

Ontari snarls, a wordless growl of rage. Klark rolls away as Ontari swings again -- she’s wrenched a branch free from one of the trees that grow in the cliff crevices, gnarled and sturdy against the constant winds. Klark is unsteady as she climbs to her feet, but she keeps her blade in her hand. She can see Ontari’s is at her waist, but the other girl is smart: she uses the length and heft of the branch to keep Klark at a distance. Ontari probably knew after the ritual combat that she wouldn’t be able to take Klark in a fair fight.

 

“It was a stupid plan,” Klark tells Ontari. She’s pretty sure if she keeps the other girl talking, eventually the double vision of her will come back together into one. “There’s nothing for you in the far North, all those families are loyal to me --”

 

“I wasn’t going _north_ ,” Ontari hisses. She’s on edge, desperate and defensive. Klark has to use that to her advantage, somehow -- find a way to counterbalance her own mild concussion. “But you’d think that. Life in the barrens has made your blood slow and your brain sluggish, just like she said it would.”

 

Klark stumbles, leaps away as Ontari tries to take advantage and swing her branch.

 

“You’re very loyal to a dead queen,” Klark says, when she knows she can speak calmly. “I wish you’d given me a chance to prove myself worthy of that loyalty.”

 

“You?” Ontari’s breathing fast, adjusting her grip on the branch as she alternates watching Klark’s face and her feet. “You think I’d become one of your subjects? A barbarian who never spent a day -- not a _single day_ \-- serving in that bitch’s court?”

 

She swings, and with such force she almost unbalances. Klark has to scramble back, struggling for footing on dirt that’s frozen solid.

 

“Do you have any idea what she would make us do? How she would make us prove we were worthy of _service_?” Ontari looks haunted as she paces with her weapon. “And all the time knowing the threat of you, and your coming, was the only thing she feared. The only thing that could stop her. When I was a child I would beg the stars to send you every night. I would wake up every morning and try to keep my eyes closed as long as possible, hoping to give you more time to arrive.”

 

“But I did come,” Klark says, struggling for focus -- it feels like the inside of her head is lined with fur. “As soon as I could. I killed Nia.”

 

“Too late,” Ontari says flatly, and swings again.

 

Klark’s too slow and the branch catches her hip, throwing her to the ground. She has a perfect view of Ontari, raising her branch again for a blow that will probably all but finish Klark off. Behind her is the velvet darkness of the night sky, a glittering wash of stars. Ontari herself is thrown into harsh contrasts as the moon grows brighter overhead.

 

Through the noise in her head, Klark manages to find: anger. At herself, mostly. It takes only a moment, less than, for her to realize that even with her destiny completed, she doesn’t feel _done_.

 

Something draws Ontari's attention, and she glances up.

 

Not soon enough.

 

Lexa must have leapt _over_ her prostrate body, Klark realizes much later when she’s trying to piece fuzzy memories together. That’s the only way she could have put herself between Klark and Ontari so quickly, causing Ontari to stumble back. Klark misses it. She’s a little sad about that, after. She thinks the Commander must have been quite a sight.

 

All she knows in that moment is she isn’t dead yet. Which is nice, if puzzling. She can hear the sound of combat close by. She’s not part of that, though. She’s pretty sure. She could just close her eyes. Her eyelids are heavier than the rough stones digging into her back.

 

Something -- some _one_ \-- directs a backward kick that connects with her ribs.

 

“Ow,” Klark protests, opening her eyes.

 

“Get up,” Lexa says without looking away from her opponent. Her sword gives her a reach that cancels Ontari’s advantage with the branch, but her focus is split. Klark wonders why Ontari doesn’t use that, and then sees the look on the other girl’s face: panic edging into fear. Ontari doesn’t seem eager to lock weapons, any kind of weapon, with the Commander. Not at all.

 

“ _Up_ ,” Lexa snarls. “I thought your mother taught you to survive. If she could see you now she’d cover her face in shame.”

 

Abi would be more sympathetic to the fact Klark probably has a concussion.

 

... on second thought.

 

Heaving herself up onto her knees is one of the hardest things she remembers ever having to do, every muscle and sinew opposed, screaming at her to _lie down_. It takes all of her concentration to push past it, and Klark doesn’t pay attention to Lexa and Ontari again until she can kneel upright.  

 

Lexa’s scored a hit, Klark notes muzzily. There’s a long cut on one side of Ontari’s face. In the moonlight, the blood streaking down her cheek looks black.

 

“-- could have come to us,” Lexa is saying.

 

“To be welcomed me with open arms?” Ontari scoffs. “The cuckoo’s child, raised by your enemy?” Her face twists even further in disgust, though Klark is not sure who she’s directing it at. “What would I have done with the rest of my life? Waited for yours to end? Watched as _she_ ruled the kingdom I was promised?”

 

“Your blood guarantees you a place --”

 

This incenses Ontari, and she rushes forward with a roar. Lexa counters each swing. Again, Klark can see she could disarm Ontari easily -- but she doesn’t. Klark wonders what she’s waiting for.  

 

“A _place_?” Ontari cries out. Klark can hear the exhaustion beginning to creep into her voice. And still, Lexa doesn’t kill her. “A room in your tower. A mention in _her_ legend. My blood means I am meant to rule, and you think I would be satisfied with scraps.”

 

“There have never been two nightbloods of an age alive, like this,” Lexa says. Klark wishes she could see her face, there’s a note to her voice of -- of yearning? If only she didn’t have her back to Klark. “You could have been my advisor, my... or if you didn’t want to leave the clan you knew, then be a liaison, you could have served --”

 

“The two of you.” Ontari’s face is a rictus of conflicting emotions. “Fate’s favored daughters.”

 

... maybe Lexa is waiting for Klark? Maybe the Commander thinks the Queen should take this kill? Klark reaches around, hiding the movement as she loosens the knife in her back sheath as if testing her bruises.

 

“All the gifts you have received,” Ontari continues, almost caressing. “Both of you should be careful. Of course I envy what you have, but I know -- we both know -- it only means there is more the world can take from you. Power. Happiness. Love.”

 

Klark blinks and the blade is naked in her hand. There’s a faint ringing in her ears. She’s pretty sure she lost a few seconds. She _really_ wishes Lexa weren’t so particular on the niceties -- couldn’t she kill Ontari and just tell everyone Klark did it? -- but if this is how it has to happen, then it has to happen quickly. Before Klark keels over into the snow.

 

“Everyone sees the way you look at her. Everyone _knows_.”

 

Klark thinks Lexa makes a response to that -- she hears something low, can just catch the end of a head-shake out of the corner of her eye as she shifts and allows stiff muscles to loosen.

 

“How long,” Ontari asks, “before word spreads? To the other clans, to Polis? To that girl whose name is paired with yours in such beautiful songs?”

 

Lexa stands like she was carved from the cliff face. It helps, it means she’s blocking Klark from Ontari’s view as Klark shifts up onto the balls of her feet and into a crouch.

 

“I can’t wait until she knows. Then I won’t be the only one to have my life stolen, my heart _broken_ , by the girl who walked out of a storm.”

 

Klark attacks.

 

She uses Lexa as a pivot, swinging around the obstacle of the taller girl’s body with a hand on Lexa’s bicep for torque. Lexa jerks -- Klark surprised her -- but Klark is already launching, coming around the other girl so fast and so hard Ontari can only widen her eyes before the two of them collide.

 

It’s a body-to-body hit, a slam that knocks Ontari off her feet and into the fresh snow. The other girl tries to raise her weapon, even winded, but Klark is ready for it and pins that shoulder. Her own knife was already in her hand -- was sinking deep into Ontari’s side as they fell to the ground together -- and she uses the same adjustment to send it even deeper into Ontari’s heart.

 

Ontari gives a strange little cry. She twists and kicks with the sudden strength of the dying, but Klark is used to it. Her vision can be as spotty as it likes, it won’t impede the surety of her hold and the familiarity of containing a prey’s dying throes. No life goes without a struggle.

 

Finally Ontari goes limp. She’s still alive -- her eyes are glassy but responsive, her breath coming in quick, aborted gasps. When Klark sits up, Ontari doesn’t.

 

Ontari says something.

 

Klark hesitates, but a quick look at Ontari’s weapon reveals she’s released it to fall several inches away from her nerveless hand. There’s no way she can recover it now. Klark bends closer to hear the breathy, almost hiccupping words coming from Ontari’s mouth.

 

“Is it always like this?” the other girl is asking, over and over. Perturbed, Klark turns her head to see her eyes better. They aren’t glassy, they’re _distant_ , and to Klark’s addled brain it feels like she’s looking past Klark, into Klark, an awareness that encompasses far more than the space between them.

 

Ontari’s eyes find her, and focus. “Do we always end like this?”

 

Between the winds and the expanse around them, the words have the slightest echo.

 

Klark can feel every futile pump of Ontari’s heart through the knife that connects them. She shoves it deeper to put the wild-eyed girl out of her misery.

 

Ontari dies.

 

Klark jerks her knife free of the body, breathing hard. The attack took the last of her strength -- maybe a little more than, her legs don’t feel quite ready to hold her, and the sweat collecting along her neck and back is going cold. The skin of her bare arms feels like ice. A fine, insuppressible shiver starts through her, but she tries to put on a good face as she shuffles on her knees to face Lexa.

 

Who is staring down at her looking... stricken. And something like grieved. But that has to be a trick of the strange and shadowed light. What reason would Lexa have to mourn the death of a usurper?

 

She’s not even looking at Klark’s face, but her hands. Klark follows her gaze and finds them spattered with Ontari’s blood, again unnervingly black as a trick of the light.

 

“Next time,” she hears herself saying, “you have my permission to take the kill.”

 

“Your permission --” Lexa finally looks at Klark’s face, and what she sees there makes her blanch. “ _Klark_.”

 

Klark would answer, but she’s too busy pitching forward into darkness.

 

* * *

 

 

Something is hitting her face. She feels it. She just... feels it as if it were happening to someone else.

 

Until a particularly sharp _crack_ catches the top of her cheek and the pain starbursts into awareness, in time for her to catch: “... up _right now_ I swear I will --”

 

Klark blinks, and whatever Lexa was about to swear, she folds it behind her lips. “Good.” She steps away.

 

Speech feels like it requires re-learning her own language. “... happened?”

 

“I decided it was better if you didn’t die of exposure before you had a chance to die of a brain injury.” They’re in the shallow cave where Ontari planned to spend the night earlier. It’s not warm, but it’s out of the wind, and the moonlight pours in from the entrance. Lexa must have carried her back down the cliff face. Right now the Commander is busying herself with a canteen of water, thoroughly soaking the edge of her own shirt. The look she sends Klark is _searing_ , Klark would swear it leaves a mark. “Sorry to thwart your lofty ambitions.”

 

“I wasn’t...” Klark begins to protest on instinct and then gives up, sagging back against the cave. Lexa has propped her up sitting, but she can sleep like this. If she can close her eyes for --

 

Not a slap this time, but a very sharp poke. And into a bruise. Klark wonders if Lexa took note of where Ontari landed her hits, earlier, of if she’s just lucky.

 

Opening her eyes to see Lexa’s anger, she’s not betting on luck.

 

“Don’t you dare,” Lexa says. She takes one of Klark’s hands by the wrist and begins to scour it clean. Klark wants to tell her not to fuss, it’s only blood -- she’s been covered in it before. “You know you have to stay awake. At least until we ride back to the Ice Court and hand you over to the healers.”

 

... it had been a long ride out. Klark whimpers.

 

Lexa’s clear satisfaction is sharp enough to slice someone open. “Maybe next time you’ll think before throwing yourself into -- how dare you, you're a queen, your life is not just your own. You carry your people’s lives and hopes, and to risk that for --”

 

“Worth it.” The energy for this argument is going to be a struggle. Lexa is probably counting on that. Well, if she's allowed to cheat like that, maybe Klark is allowed to throw up on her.

 

“And were the _birds_ worth it?” Her movements are jerky, but her touch is gentle as she moves on to Klark’s other hand. The first is now perfectly clean of blood, even in the fine wrinkles of Klark’s joints and under her fingernails. “More than your promise not to attack without me.”

 

She gets up and moves away after that, too abruptly for Klark to answer. Klark is still blinking in confusion -- and a little guilt -- when Lexa returns with the jacket Klark discarded earlier. She manhandles Klark into it, but it’s the look on her face that makes Klark wince.

 

“Lexa --”

 

“You _swore_.” Klark’s arms are in the jacket, and Lexa begins to fasten it so snugly Klark is not sure she’ll have much movement once finished. “On your fealty to me.”

 

“Yes, I did.” Her head is still swimming -- _spinning_ \-- but she remembers this much. She considered this part very important. “And anything I swear on that will be binding, as much as my life. Once I give you my fealty.”

 

Hands latch on either side of the jacket’s collar, pulling Klark right up into Lexa’s face. “ _Once_ you --”

 

“Which is tomorrow,” Klark says gamely.

 

Lexa stares at her. Her grip tightens for a split second, until the constriction around Klark’s throat borders on uncomfortable.

 

Then it’s releases. Lexa sighs out, shoulders drooping. Her eyes fall shut. Her head falls forward until their foreheads touch.

 

“Tomorrow,” Lexa says after a moment, her breath skating along Klark’s cheek.

 

It feels like forgiveness.

 

* * *

 

 

Lexa won’t let her ride by herself. She doesn’t trust Klark not to try and fall asleep on horseback, and honestly, Klark agrees.

 

It should be more humiliating. Klark can see the half-smiling looks Lexa’s warriors send them at the sight of the Ice Queen nestled in the Commander’s arms. Even the rescued children giggle at them, although that might be from Klark sticking out her tongue in an attempt to prove she’s not as bad off as she looks.

 

But. It’s comfortable. Lexa keeps the horse’s stride even and smooth. And Klark’s allowed to let her head fall back to rest in the crook of Lexa’s neck and shoulder, even if Lexa persists in keeping her awake with small, inconsequential questions.

 

It’s not a conversation, really, because Klark doesn’t have the energy or focus for it. Instead Lexa quizzes her. Nothing she actually cares about, Klark thinks, but whatever will keep Klark talking. First memory. Favorite food. Has Genai ever really torn someone’s throat out with her teeth for crossing Klark.

 

“No,” Klark giggles. “That’s just the way she looks. She’s never -- well, unless you count the snowcat.”

 

“Snowcat?” Lexa pronounces the Ice Nation word like it’s new to her.

 

“Medium-sized predator. Lives off rabbits, mostly, but I startled it. It startled _me_. The barrens don’t have anything like it.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“So...” Huge, tufted ears. Downward-sloping bodies to allow for longer hind legs. Absolutely, comically enormous paws. “... cute.”

 

Lexa’s arm around her waist -- she holds Klark steady there, grips the reins one-handed -- spasms. “ _Cute_?”

 

“It was,” Klark protests, defensive even months after Genai’s thorough scolding. “It didn’t deserve to die.”

 

“I assume Genai killed it?”

 

“Well. It attacked me.”

 

“... you couldn’t defend yourself?”

 

“I said I was startled.”

 

Klark can _hear_ Lexa’s slow grin. “You didn’t want to. You were hoping it would give up and move on.”

 

“It would have, except Genai boxed it in. Don’t laugh.” She knows she’s being petulant. Between her aching head and exhausted body, she doesn’t care.

 

Lexa doesn’t say anything. From the slight shaking of her body, she knows enough to not laugh out loud.

 

Klark can see the glow of the encampment just on the horizon, all the torches leading the way home.

 

“They’re beautiful, too.” She adds in the lull. “They have little white and black streaks in their fur that makes their faces look painted. And they’re smart. Genai says they climb anything, and swim. They’re too smart to be found, usually.”

 

“Like you and your mother. In the barrens.”

 

“Hmm.” She wants to tell Lexa it’s not like that, she just likes the snowcats’ faces. But she doesn’t have the energy. “I might never see another.”

 

Lexa shifts behind her, adjusting her arm around Klark. She ends up pulling Klark a bit closer, their bodies fitting together more snugly. It’ll make for an easier last length of the ride. “Perhaps when I next visit we can hunt them together. Not to capture or kill. To see them again.”

 

Klark nestles deeper into Lexa’s shoulder. “Why would you?” she asks drowsily.

 

“I...” The question takes Lexa by surprise, Klark thinks. They ride in a silence longer than Lexa has allowed since starting back. Klark could have easily drifted off, but. She forces her eyes open, not wanting to miss Lexa’s reply.

 

“I never expected to come this far.” The admittance is soft, and low. “I was prepared to do whatever it took to bring the clans together. If my life was needed for that, I would give it.” They ride again in quiet for a bit before she finishes: “I hoped that would not be necessary. But I couldn’t let myself... look forward to the alternative.”

 

Klark knows what she means. It hadn’t been killing Nia that had nearly undone her. It had been in the moments after Nia drew her lasts breath, when Klark looked up to see seasoned warriors, and a stunned court, slowly sinking to their knees before her.

 

That had been the moment she nearly lost herself, swallowed beneath the wave of _what next_?

 

“I enjoy the thought that there are still things to... do, to see and experience. Things that are still waiting for me to discover.”

 

And Klark is pleased to think there might be things about this world she knows and Lexa doesn’t. Things she can introduce to the other girl.

 

“When do you think you’ll visit us again?” Klark asks, pressed to Lexa’s chest. The encampment is even closer, now.

 

Lexa sighs. “I’m not sure. It’s a long journey, and I can’t often leave Polis for so long. You’ll be asked to the yearly Summit before I can make it back to the Ice Nation.”

 

Klark nods slowly, feels Lexa’s chin rub against her head. “That’s fair. First you came to me, and next I’ll come to you. We can discuss the next time you’ll visit, then.”

 

Lexa hesitates before saying, a bit waspishly: “I only came to you first because of the _great ceremony_ involved, you understand. As the leader of the Coalition --”

 

Klark laughs. It creaks in her chest after the strain and death of this long night, but it feels good, too -- it feels clean.

 

Lexa doesn’t join her, exactly, but every time Klark appears to be tapering-off Lexa gives another put-upon _huff_ , and like that Klark is smiling when they return, and Lexa gives her over to the healers.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

 

The final day of Klark’s coronation dawns clear and bright, and Klark is nervous.

 

Not of herself. She’s trained the litany and gestures of this for weeks with Genai. She could do this _fully_ concussed and suffering from fresh wounds, not just a little worse for wear after a bad night.

 

She’s nervous about Lexa.

 

She’s been searching for the other girl since the morning meal, but apparently her time has been taken up with audiences with other clan leaders. There’s no real time before the ceremony itself, but Klark pesters and pesters Genai until she agrees to tell Lexa’s bodyguard to come to the preparation tent early.

 

Klark is pacing when Lexa walks inside. She looks up to see Lexa halted in the entrance, staring, her arm still frozen in the action of pushing away the curtain.

 

“You look nice,” Lexa says.

 

“Thanks.” Klark spares a thought for her new robes. She hadn’t liked them at first; the long sleeves that ended at her fingertips had been a particular point of contention. She isn’t vain -- she _isn’t_ \-- but she likes to leave her arms bare when trying to leave an impression. She’s more aware than ever since joining the Ice Nation proper that she doesn’t strike the most imposing figure on first glance. It has to be said: she’s fairly short, and just the littlest bit round. She dares anyone to try her, regardless, but when it comes to sheer _intimidation_...

 

“Leave them,” Genai had said as Klark had scowled and tugged at the sleeves like she would rip them out at the shoulders. “They make you look regal -- like a queen, not a brawler. And if you leave them I’ll shave your head,” she finished in exasperation.

 

She hadn’t, not the way Klark had first envisioned: completely, or maybe with a ruff down the center like Klark had seen on younger warriors. But there was a good chunk of it gone, and Genai had tied what was left back in elaborate braids that lay close to her skull. Klark really wanted to learn how to do that for herself. Abi had not been one for the niceties of hair-braiding.

 

She _did_ like the heavy trim of thick, white pelt that ran along the robe’s edges -- her wrists, her collar, and so deep at the hem the robe was almost more fur than fabric. “It’s tradition for the Ice Nation monarch to wear whitefox fur,” Genai had told her, watching as Klark luxuriated. “And the color brings out your eyes.”

 

“I needed to talk to you before -- before we do this,” Klark says. Lexa remembers herself enough to step fully inside and let the tent flap fall behind her, shrouding them in relative quiet and shadow.

 

“Is something wrong?”

 

“Yes.” Klark grimaces. “No, but -- it’s about something you said last night.”

 

Lexa is wary, casting her eyes at the corners. “Last night was --”

 

“About how I keep throwing away my life.”

 

Lexa drags her eyes to Klark’s face. “I was angry.”

 

“You were.” Klark takes a deep breath to calm herself. “You were also wrong.”

 

“... you take more risks than you should.”

 

“I _don’t_ \--” Klark bites down on her words, forces herself to be calm. “I take the risks that are necessary.”

 

She can see that Lexa wants to be conciliatory -- especially considering what they’ll be called to do in mere minutes -- but is struggling. The muscles in her jaw work, but she makes no answer.

 

“If you will ask fealty of me,” Klark continues, clenching her fists at her sides until her nails dig into calloused palms, “I need you to know what I will and will not promise you. What my fealty means.”

 

The crease between Lexa’s eyebrows deepens, but she’s beginning to look considering instead of frustrated. “Go on.”

 

“I don’t think it’s a difference in who we are as leaders.” Klark feels free to go a little slower, now that she knows she’ll be given a fair chance. She chooses her words with extreme care. “I think -- I think we are very much alike, in that we are willing to give to our people... everything of ourselves.” She swallows. “But I need you to know, the needs of my position are different.”

 

Lexa doesn’t say anything now, but her attitude indicates Klark has her full attention.

 

“You aren’t just one clan leader. You lead the Coalition. Maybe that will change -- maybe power will shift, or someone with even greater vision will step into your place. Until then, you’re needed. You must prioritize your life and leadership above others. Not because it has more value, but because you carry so _many_ others.”

 

“You don’t think it’s the same for all leaders?”

 

“To an extent.” Klark forces her hands to relax, glad they’re hidden by the long sleeves of her robe. “But, listen. My people are not... they’re barely united. What they share beyond language and culture is trauma. Fear, and shame, and regret.” She lowers her voice until she is certain her words can’t possibly be heard outside her tent -- and part of her burns to say them out loud, even then. “The Ice Nation is barely a clan, in fact. More like the survivors of a long war, only their enemy has always been within.”

 

“Your reign will change that.”

 

“I want it to. But it has to begin with prioritizing my people. And not just as a whole, but -- Lexa. Those children. They deserved better than to be used up for someone else’s greater purpose. All of them do: the warriors, the families. Nia and those before her have done so much damage. If things are to change, then I must be a different kind of ruler. One who is proven willing to sacrifice her life for any of theirs.”

 

That was the realization that kept the wave of uncertainty at bay when she looked up to see all those kneeling before her. Her own confusion, her pain, had been nothing to the stark fear in her people’s eyes. She is young, and untried, and alone. But somehow, she would find the resources within to meet their overwhelming need. That was the sense of purpose that had carried her since that moment.

 

Well, not completely alone anymore. She has Genai.

 

And maybe...

 

“I know it’s not how you lead. Or how you would have me lead.” Klark swallows. “But I can’t be anyone else’s vision of a queen but my own. I will give you my fealty. But my life will always belong to them.”

 

Lexa’s expression has smoothed out. Klark can’t read it, although she thinks the look in Lexa’s eyes is curiously soft.

 

“You didn’t have to tell me all this,” she says.

 

“No, I guess not. But I -- respect you. I wanted you to know the truth.” Her heart is hammering away so hard in her chest she feels light-headed. “I would like us to be friends.”

 

Lexa’s mouth drops open. “I -- what?”

 

“Don’t laugh at me,” Klark warns. “I know how it sounds. I know we’re not children.” She straightens her back, self-conscious. “I only... I want to be clear. I’m not just nice to you because of your position.”

 

“Are you nice to me?”

 

Klark glares. Lexa turns her head away, touching her knuckles to her lips before turning back. The line of her mouth is steady by then. “I’m sorry,” she says, demure. “You were asking very nicely to be my friend.”

 

“ _Lexa_.”

 

Lexa bursts out into laughter. It’s a nice sound, unexpectedly light and a little husky, and Klark’s stomach twists with happiness. Even if she is the one being laughed at.

 

And then Lexa is reaching out a hand to Klark’s face, still laughing to herself: “This is why I --”

 

She freezes. They both do, Lexa’s arm suspended between them. Her fingertips so close to Klark’s cheek a deep breath would connect them. Klark holds hers for a reason she can’t name, staring into Lexa’s widening eyes.

 

Slowly, slowly, Lexa’s arm falls back to her side.

 

She looks...

 

“Are you okay?” Klark asks. She’s a bit shaky herself. She feels like something fled from the tent when Lexa’s touch failed to reach her -- it feels colder, even with the sun bearing down on them through the roof.

 

“I didn’t...” Lexa shakes her head, closes her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says after another moment. “I’m just tired from last night.”

 

“Will you be alright during the ceremony?” Klark asks inanely. Of course Lexa will be. But she feels the need to say _something_.

 

“Yes. Yes.”

 

Almost against her will Klark’s gaze is drawn down to Lexa’s hand. She’s running the thumb across the tips of the other four fingers, slow and lingering. Klark doesn’t think she knows she’s doing it.

 

They both jump when Genai sticks her her head into the tent. She stares at Lexa at first, a frown etching itself deep into her features, before she turns to Klark and nods.

 

“They’re ready to begin,” Klark tells Lexa.

 

“Yes. I will -- they’ll need me in place before your entrance.” Lexa goes to exit, Genai barely shifting to let her pass. She stops, and says over her shoulder, “We are friends, Klark.”

 

Then she’s gone.

 

“... is _that_ what you called her for?” Genai asks.

 

“No,” Klark scowls. “We had serious business to discuss.”

 

“I heard her laughing.”

 

“You stand outside to guard me, Genai, not eavesdrop.”

 

“Hmph.” Genai retracts her head and lets the entrance fall closed again with a dissatisfied twitch.

 

Klark takes all of it -- her bewilderment at Lexa’s behavior, her annoyance at Genai, even the slow-growing warmth at Lexa’s departing words -- and shoves it to the side. She breathes in, straightens her shoulders, and holds her head up high.

 

Time to become Queen.

 

* * *

 

 

 

“My warriors will start on the road in a few hours.”

 

Klark stares at Lexa, the roasted delicacy in her hands forgotten. “Where will they go?”

 

The look in the other girl’s eyes is opaque. “To Polis.”

 

“I... oh.” Klark puts the food back on her plate, feeling stupid. She can’t ask _are you going with them_ because, of course, of course she is. “Oh.”

 

The feasting continues around them. The day is mild enough to hold the post-ceremony celebration outside so that all can eat together. She can hear laughter and snatches of singing coming from every side.

 

“Your intention was to stay a few days longer.” Klark isn’t sure why she’s retreated into formality. Maybe it’s a holdover from the ceremony, the weight of ritual and vows as she knelt in the snow before Lexa with her hands held palm-up. Waiting for the touch of cold fingers that brought her to her feet.

 

“It was. But I'm told the ice is thickening on the lakes, and it will be safer to travel by road. We’re starting earlier since it will take more time.”

 

Lexa doesn’t look at Klark as she talks, her attention on the joyous crowds surrounding the head table where she and Klark sit. On either side, at their own tables, are the other clan leaders. Klark was happy enough to sit in silence with Lexa, until this. Perhaps she felt a bit -- the _tiniest_ bit -- shy in the other girl’s presence after embarrassing herself in the tent. Lexa’s own getup for the coronation doesn’t help: she’s donned a long cloak the color of rust, of a material that catches the light and seems to shift with it. She’s also painted dark streaks across and trailing from her eyes, what Genai had whispered to Klark was a traditional affectation for Woods Clan warriors. It gives unexpected dimension to Lexa’s features, making her look more solemn, and even older. Which Klark definitely does not resent.

 

“Oh.” Klark struggles for something else to say in response. “Well, it won’t be long before I’m in Polis myself. So I guess it doesn’t matter.”

 

Lexa doesn’t answer for a long moment.

 

“Commander?” Uncertainty grips her. “We’ll meet at the Summit this year, won’t we?”

 

Slowly, still not facing Klark, Lexa nods. “Yes.”

 

There’s an oddness to her tone. It sounds almost like longing. But it also sounds like regret.

 

... no, it’s just... Klark has had a long day. A series of long days. And she’s disappointed at this news, of course. She’s imagining things.

 

There had been a moment, during the coronation. After Klark had been lifted to her feet. The sun had been shining, and all around them blue, blue sky as Lexa accepted her oath of fealty. Their eyes had met, and where their hands clasped together it felt like a current.

 

Klark keeps hoping there will be something like that again. Even if just an echo, or the faintest reprise. Some moment during the feast, in between warriors and well-wishers coming by the table to talk with them both, when Lexa will look over and...

 

But there’s nothing, and it’s only a short time before Klark is seeing Lexa and her warriors march away from the camp with banners snapping in the breeze. Beside her, she hears Genai give a sigh of relief.

 

Klark isn’t disappointed. Too much has happened for a few hours of the last day to spoil it. She has Lexa’s respect, and friendship. She can be content with that.

 

After all, one thing is certain: they will meet again.

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

 

Klark wakes up.

 

It’s a fragmented process. First, she’s conscious of the air she’s pulling into her lungs: warmer than anything she remembers without the tang of a wood fire to it. The length of her body is resting on the ground -- she can feel dirt under her hands, grass tickling at her wrists. But her head is propped up on something softer.

 

Second, she hears the voice.

 

“-- hear me? Klark? Can you open your eyes?”

 

She knows that voice.

 

Panic makes her sit up and scramble to her feet before she even takes her bearings, before her eyes can fully adjust to the sunlight. Her reflexes kick in and catch her before she overbalances, and she manages to turn with a measure of grace.

 

Half a dozen strangers look back. She doesn’t know any of these people -- they’re clean of tattoos or scars, their clothing is strange, and some of them are carrying _guns_. They look at her with an expectancy that makes her skin crawl.

 

But they’re preferable to the sight of the Commander of the twelve clans kneeling on the ground, and the knowledge that Klark had her head in that lap a second ago.

 

“Klark?” the Commander says. There’s something off about the way she says it.

 

Not that Klark cares if the Commander takes the time to pronounce her name correctly.

 

She takes solace in the thought, allows it to straighten her shoulders and spine. “Heda.”

 

The Commander’s eyes widen a fraction. “Klark.”

 

It sounds right that time.

 

Genai is nowhere to be seen. It’s not unheard-of for her to leave Klark’s side, but... She looks up and around her. There’s a mountain at her back, dark and looming, with a door cut in the middle.

 

A _door_ \--

 

It has to be _the_ Mountain. She has to be --

 

How did she get here?

 

Someone says her name -- but wrong, somehow wrong again -- and there’s a touch to her shoulder. Klark is wound so tight it’s almost a relief to give over to instinct, grab the unknown hand and _pull_ until the stranger’s weight is over her hip and she can throw him to the ground. Both knives are in her hands even as he’s blinking up at her in confusion: one at his throat, the other pointed at the girl who went for her weapon when Klark laid hands on the young man.

 

They’re an odd pair. Similar enough in coloring and features that she can guess at their relationship even though he’s not dressed like she is, like a Woods Clan warrior. She has no tattoos, though, and she was still a little too slow to react for Klark to believe she’s fully one of theirs.

 

The others are just as strange. Clearly not of any clan, but walking in daylight. Two of them, boy and girl, are spattered with what looks and smells like drying blood.

 

Her skin crawls for the necessity, but she looks to the Commander for help.

 

“Allies,” the Commander says immediately. “All of them. And safe.” It doesn’t register on Klark she’s using Ice Nation language until she switches to her own, snarling at the too-slow Woods Clan warrior girl: “Stand _down_. Don’t make her kill you.”

 

Clearly resenting it, the girl rests back on her heels.

 

The young boy covered in blood says something. Klark doesn’t catch the words -- she never liked her lessons in the Mountain’s language, never saw the use, and only persisted in the knowledge that... certain others were already fluent, and Klark didn’t want to fall short. But his distress is clear as a bell.

 

Reassurance comes from the man Klark put on the ground. Again, he speaks too quickly for Klark to follow, but it puts the boy at ease. Klark could hold her defensive stance all day, and part of her wants to, but she doesn’t want the Commander to think... she sheathes her skinning knife. She keeps her striking knife in her hand, but points it at the ground rather than her captive’s throat.

 

The young man sits, squinting up at her. There’s dust in his hair and on his clothes from where she threw him down, but his attention is only for Klark. “You know,” he says, slowly enough that she has no trouble understanding, “I don’t think I believed it. Not really. Not until just now.”

 

Before Klark can puzzle out what he possibly means, she hears “ _Your Majesty_!” echo in the field around them. She turns to see Genai and Trest riding out from the line of the trees.

 

Adrenaline drains from her in a swoop. She slides her second knife into a sheath just before she begins to be aware of the catalogue of aches and pains running through her body: the strain of muscles in her left arm, the soreness in her shoulder, and _gods_ but she’s hungry. She feels like she hasn’t eaten properly in days.

 

Trest budges up as soon as he rides over, and Klark swings herself into the saddle behind him as she takes the reins. She has no idea what’s going on, but she doesn’t need to. Not until she knows she’s safe and secure, with her own kind.

 

“You’ll take care of her.” That from the Commander. Klark doesn’t wait to hear Genai’s response. She spurs the horse with her heels as Trest whispers directions back to camp. But she’s not surprised at the softness of it. She’s sure if she looked over her shoulder, she’d see a very convincing performance of concern.

 

Lexa’s always been a good liar.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

“... my soul did _what_?”

 

Genai throws up her hands. “Woods Clan,” she says darkly. It’s how she’s punctuated this bizarre story at intervals, and now how she chooses to wrap it up.  

 

Klark might think... no, she’s not sure what she might think. But every time she feels herself beginning to doubt, her fingers creep up to the gunshot wound in her shoulder. That’s real. That happened.

 

And she can’t remember it.

 

“What do I need to know?” Genai understands what she’s asking. What’s most important? What does she need to focus on? What _can_ she deal with that’s in her control?

 

“Echo sent five hundred warriors with me, kept one hundred and fifty at Court.”

 

Echo. What Klark would give to have her here. “More than I would expect. Is she afraid of attack while I was...”

 

Genai shakes her head. “I told no one else of your. Condition. But there reports of strange activity near the border. She was taking thirty warriors with her and preparing to explore the situation as I left.”

 

The queen in Woods Clan territory and the Heir outside the Court. Klark doesn’t like it. She itches to get on a horse, any horse, and start to ride home. It’s too warm, here, the air is heavy with water, and to think of the Commander out there, that Klark might actually go outside of this tent and _see_ her --

 

She shudders off her unease. “Did we lose many warriors?”

 

“No fatalities reported.” When Klark raises an eyebrow in surprise, Genai continues: “The Commander led a very impressive campaign, and the intent was to distract instead of engage. A few injuries, and some of them may be serious enough our warriors will have to weather winter in Polis. But perhaps no lives lost.”

 

“And while you were out there, I went into the Mountain.”

 

“Yes. You can’t remember?”

 

Maybe _can’t_ is the wrong word. _Doesn’t_. But _could_. Maybe. Potentially.

 

In the first few months of her reign she used to dream she was talking to Abi. Well, mostly fighting with her, but that was true to life. They’d hash out whatever new obstacle or issue Klark had discovered was part of being queen of a scattered, distrusting people, just as they used to argue over potential problems in the past. Klark didn’t always remember the exact details when she woke up. But every time she was left feeling more certain of herself, more confident in her position. And at the same time utterly bereft with the reminder of what she’d lost.

 

This is almost like that. As if the specifics of what happened were unimportant, dismissed into the recesses of memory she might reach, if she feels like trying. She’s left with the feeling of... resolution. Together with the smallest sigh of wistfulness; as if she’d gotten used to something -- some _one_ \-- and now they were gone.

 

“Of course this would happen in front of the gathered clans,” Klark mutters under her breath. “Do I have something to fear there? Do you think they’ll try and find a way to leverage it against me?”

 

But Genai shakes her head. “When you were... compromised, you were careful not to mix with anyone who might guess your condition. You kept to these, these Sky People, for the most part. I doubt they’ll carry tales to the other clans or their leaders, and even if they do, not many will believe them.”

 

“Woods Clan warriors would.”

 

“I don’t think so,” Genai says slowly. “It was difficult to convince the Commander and others what was happening, at first. This ritual is reserved for Woods Clan, and they didn’t like that it was shared with an outsider.”

 

But her other self had caused enough death to deserve it. Klark thinks maybe she’s supposed to feel disturbed by the fact, but she isn’t. She’s already taken so many lives to keep her own. She isn’t surprised to hear it’s something of a theme, no matter where her story begins.

 

... born up in the sky. She should take a moment to think about that. Once she gets a moment.

 

“So, among clanspeople, you knew,” she says. “And Trest. Did you tell Echo what was happening?” Genai nods. “Three, then, and the Commander makes a fourth.” The look on Genai’s face makes her stomach clench. “What?”

 

“Several others from Woods Clan knew. A spiritual figure who verified the ritual. A general who was present at your capture, along with her second. The Commander’s... the Shadow-walker.”

 

“You _met_ her?” For one joyously pure second all her headaches melt away into excitement. And a little apprehension. Shadow-walker hasn’t been active since Klark took the crown, which has allowed her to collect stories of the subversive agent in the meantime. It’s hard not to admire Shadow-walker’s cleverness and sheer nerve. But it was easier when she didn’t seem to be _Klark_ ’s problem. “Is she still here?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Is she serving as a general, now? Or an advisor?”

 

“She’s the Commander’s favorite.”

 

“She...” What had the name been. Anconia? “Costia. _Costia_ is -- she’s the Shadow-walker? You’re sure?”

 

“I saw the fletchings on her arrows. And she admitted it.”

 

Costia.

 

Klark has heard less about her by that name. The reports didn’t give enough to form an impression of her as her own person instead of an accessory to, or an enhancement of, the Commander’s legend. Lexa being so young, so powerful. And so loved.

 

It makes too much sense. Klark feels stupid for not figuring it out on her own.

 

“I’m tired,” she tells Genai. Suddenly it’s all she can do to keep herself sitting upright on her cot. “If there’s anything --”

 

“Nothing else for right now.” Genai stands, but instead of leaving the tent she steps closer, puts her hand on top of Klark’s head. Klark leans her forehead into the older woman’s shoulder. They allow this of each other, sometimes, when there isn’t anyone to observe the Ice Queen’s need for simple comfort, or the fact the older woman is the only one in a position to give it. Genai smoothes her hand over Klark’s braids and says, “There’s more, but we can tackle it after you’ve slept.”

 

Tears prickle at Klark’s eyes. It’s exhaustion. It’s everything, all at once. “The reinforcements from home -- we didn’t plan the need to care and feed for them during the Summit. Or the journey back.”

 

“The Commander assured me Woods Clan would assist.”

 

“Did she.”

 

“You demanded it of her. The other you.”

 

“Huh. And she got what she asked for? Maybe she left too soon.” Possessed by a version of herself from another world, shot, starved. And her double didn’t even have the decency to sit through three days of clan politics for her. Klark lifts her head when she feels her bodyguard tense. “It was a joke, Genai. I’m just cranky after... everything, and still having to endure the Summit.”

 

“Forgive me if I prefer you representing our clan’s interests to a stranger.”

 

Klark barks a laugh. “A representative was good enough last year. What changed? Of course, the whim of our dear Commander.”

 

Genai crouches in front of her, scrutinizing her face. “Go to sleep,” she says, half-scolding. “You’re not yourself.”

 

She’s right. Klark made her mind up not to be angry about this a long time ago. Or, a year ago. Anger came from hurt, and it was ridiculous to be hurt by the maneuvering -- the _manipulation_ \-- of someone like the Commander. It was childish. Her mother was dead, Nia was dead by her hand, and Klark was a queen. She should be beyond childish things.

 

Genai makes her way out of the tent, and Klark takes a moment before closing her eyes. She pulls up the memory, fresh and sharp as the wind coming off a frozen lake. Herself, raw to the throne after less than a year on it, her excitement at hearing there was a warrior from Polis with a message. Her eagerness in thinking it came from a friend.

 

But the message from the Commander had been clear: Klark was not invited to the Summit. She was not invited to Polis. Was not _welcome_ in Polis, now or in the near future. Or, the message didn’t explicitly state that, but it didn’t have to: it stressed how only the most irresponsible queen would leave a vulnerable people this early in her reign, how anything -- _anything_ \-- that Klark might contribute would be better presented by someone from her court with more diplomatic experience and skill. Klark, the message stressed, was a creature of the North, and best suited to staying in it.

 

No mention of whether creatures of the South would ever deign again to visit.

 

Klark had felt numb when the message was first delivered to her. She had managed to say the right things and smile in the right way for the rest of the afternoon, until audiences were over and she could retreat back to her rooms.

 

Where she had cried the first hot, hurting tears she’d allowed herself since Abi died. Only these had been from shame. _Friends_. She’d actually thought -- and she’d been looking forward to --

 

Not just as friends. Those early months of ruling had not been gentle, or kind, and Klark had longed for someone else who understood. Who also knew about the sacrifices at every turn, and the regrets. Who could talk to her about it. As they once had.

 

But the year since had stripped Klark of almost everything that was childish. She was a queen of her own making, and no one else’s, now. When the unexpected summons to Polis had arrived, months before, she’d only felt the barest twinge of remembered anger. Lexa must have her reasons. She always did.

 

It’s on Klark, she reminds herself as her eyes fall shut, to remember what tricks the Commander is willing to play in order to get what she wants.

 

* * *

* * *

 

  


They travel back to Polis without the Commander. One of her generals leads the bulk of the Wood Clan warrior back to their capital city -- “Anya,” Genai whispers as she lean across her saddle when Klark catches sight of the tall woman with a dark look -- but the leader of the Coalition stays behind. Something about negotiations with the Sky People, and perhaps the leader of the now-fallen Mountain.

 

Klark asks Genai to point out Costia if she sees her. But every time Klark spots someone who lives up to her expectations -- a particularly beautiful face, a warrior so bedecked in weapons they rattle as they ride past -- she looks to Genai and the bodyguard shakes her head.

 

Polis is not what she expected. Klark is still working to undermine years of Nia’s influence at the Ice Court, as well as the power-hungry monarchs before her. Things have improved, but there persists a sense of nervous supplication, a lingering population of sycophants and the small cruelties they use to hoard power. She’d kill them all and have done with it, but she worries about the message it might send to those who don’t see their manipulations as clearly. But it’s favorite bedtime story to tell herself before sleep.

 

Polis, with its great Tower and the shining ribbon of river flowing around it, is a world apart. The troops are met with cheers and songs as they ride up to the gates, and if there’s any real preference for Woods Clan warriors over those from Broadleaf, or Shadow Valley, or Ice Nation, Klark can’t see it. It’s too late in the season for fresh flowers but the city people weave crowns of jewel-colored leaves and throw them out into the crowds, toss fir branches beneath the horses’ hooves until the stinging, rich smell is everywhere. There’s so much joy, the air almost shimmers with it.

 

There’s a special interest in _her_. When she rides past warriors from other clans salute, and children clamber over each other and their caretakers to get a better view. She knows it’s for the _other_ her, the one that brought down the Mountain and then fled to her own world. That’s a bitterness that stays at the back of her throat. But it’s hard to hold a grudge surrounded by so much celebration, so when Genai hisses at her to sit up straight she does. And sweeps her braids over her shoulder to better shows off her tattoos.

 

She thinks it’s more than the Mountain, though. People are much less demonstrative inside the Tower, but there’s a sense of cohesion, of collective work, that pricks at her. Even without the Commander walking its halls the place runs smoothly, happily. Meanwhile the thought of what chaos could be brewing after such a long absence from her own Court makes her stomach curdle.

 

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Genai tells her at the midday meal, loading Klark’s dish with more helpings from the serving plate. Klark waits until her bodyguard passes it down the table before using her knife to push half the food to Trest’s plate, which he’s scraped clean. Genai makes an outraged noise, but Trest is already tucking in. No matter how hungry Klark is, Trest is always hungrier -- he’ll probably be twice Klark’s size once he finishes his growth spurt.

 

“You’re just angry because you don’t know when you’ll see Echo next,” Genai needles at her in revenge.

 

Klark straightens, stung. “We’re not --” She rolls her eyes before digging into her food. “I’ve told you, Genai, she’s my heir first.”

 

Genai makes a face. Klark has never understood why her bodyguard was so invested in the relationship between her and the older Ice Nation warrior. She’d been Klark’s pick for a potential heir from the start, but after the official declaration they had become... more. Klark had hesitated at first, worried it might be seen as an abuse of power and unfair influence, but Echo had laughed herself sick when Klark shared this.

 

“I can’t be too careful,” Klark had protested, lips still stinging with the kiss Echo had pressed to them. They’d been in her rooms, alone, discussing collection of the coming harvest. Lexa’s messenger had left days ago, taking Klark’s representative with him.

 

Echo had laughed again. “Trust me,” she had said, warm and inviting as the candlelight throwing quivering shadows in the space, “if we’re together, _you_ won’t be the focus of their ire.”

 

Klark had frowned. “You mean they’ll doubt the reasons you were named my successor.”

 

Again, Echo had laughed. She was so different, Klark had thought: mercurial, dark-humored.

 

Although... different compared to what?

 

“No one doubts you like that,” Echo had reassured her, reaching out to cover Klark’s hand on the table. “Or your decisions. No one but yourself.”

 

The motion over her thumb over the skin of Klark’s inner wrist had been soothing. But paired with the promise in her eyes, it had made Klark’s pulse quicken. “Whatever it is you want from me, I don’t know if I can give it.”

 

“You don’t get it.” Echo had threaded their fingers together. “What I want is to give _you_ something.”

 

“Out of gratitude?” She hadn’t been sure what would be worse: that, or pity.

 

“Because I can,” Echo had said gently. “Because you... there isn’t anyone _else_ you want, is there?”

 

Heart pounding, Klark had shaken her head.

 

Echo had given an odd little smile. “Then because I want to take the opportunity. For as long as it lasts.” She waited until Klark gave her hand a hesitant squeeze until pulling her closer, slipping her other hand into Klark’s hair. “You are beautiful,” she whispered, “and strong. And we share a duty like no two others in the Court.” She ghosted a second kiss over Klark’s lips before adding: “If we are so alone in our responsibilities, wouldn’t it be nice to be alone together?”

 

Echo spent most of her nights in Klark’s quarters after that. Klark had braced herself for consequences, especially from Genai. Instead, the bodyguard was approving, even happy to hear of it. Genai pins a lot more on the arrangement than mutual appreciation, to Klark’s growing annoyance. No matter how many times Klark tells her otherwise, Genai clearly hopes she and Echo are headed for bigger promises.

 

“Shame on you, then,” Genai tells her now. “She misses _you_ very much.”

 

Klark doubts it. Oh -- not that Echo misses her, or looks forward to her return. But that it’s more than missing a daily companion, especially one whose absence means a heavier burden on her own shoulders. “I’m not ready to be Queen, you know,” she had mumbled into the back of Klark’s neck, nuzzling her as they lay together the night before Klark’s departure to Polis. “Don't get eaten by any bears. Or snowcats.”

 

Klark had reached back to thwap Echo’s bare leg, listening to the other girl laugh. “ _One_ time.”

 

“She’ll do a good job without me,” Klark tells Genai. “I just... I hate not knowing how much longer we have to wait for the Commander to return, so we can finish this and go home.”

 

“The Commander is back in Polis. Since this morning, I would guess.”

 

A small shock zips up Klark’s spine. “She is? How do you know?” They’d been together all day, and Klark heard nothing.

 

Genai nods to a figure across the eating hall. “Because that’s the Shadow-walker, and she goes where the Commander does.”

 

Hating herself for it, Klark turns to look.

 

She must have known, whatever she’s been pretending, that the real Shadow-walker couldn’t be so ostentatious, so noticeable, as her previous guesses. The agent would have been marked long before now by Nia’s warriors if she didn’t know how to blend in and disappear. But she is interesting-looking. Not pretty -- “pretty” almost feels like it would be an insult; too soft, too... permissive. Nothing about this girl is asking for anyone else’s approval.

 

Klark would be afraid she’d be caught staring, but from the moment she glanced over the Shadow-walker has been staring right back.

 

She rises from her table, and two others climb to their feet with her. Klark is surprised to recognize one of them: the dark-haired girl from the foot of the Mountain, the one who almost drew on Klark. She limps a little when she walks. The second warrior _looms_ , he’s so tall. But even so his general demeanor encourages onlookers to dismiss him, look elsewhere.

 

The Shadow-walker must know the same trick, Klark thinks as they approach, but she’s not using it now. Right now every other person in the eating hall watches as she walks up to the queen of the Ice Nation. From the way Shadow-walker carries herself she knows, and it’s her design.

 

The table is between them when she stops in front of Klark. She has yet to take her eyes from Klark’s face.

 

The silence between them lengthens, stretches until it feels at the snapping point. Klark refuses to be the one to break it.

 

Genai, giving a small sigh under her breath, rises to her feet before addressing the Woods Clan warrior: “Is there a problem, Shadow-walker?”

 

“No,” the other girl answers. She seems oddly subdued, considering the air of command she carries that has caused the rest of the hall to fall silent. “No, I... I’m only confirming something I already suspected.” Before Klark can respond to that, she follows with: “I suppose I could thank you. For Nia.”

 

Klark doesn’t miss the fact she isn’t actually _doing_ that. “Don’t bother. It wasn’t for your sake.”

 

Genai’s shoulders twitch. But Costia raises an eyebrow and her look -- which Klark didn’t register was a bit gloomy until now -- lightens. “Didn’t you do it for all of us, in a way?”

 

Ignoring the undercurrent of mockery, Klark folds her arms on top of the table. “No. I did it because she killed my mother. Because she was going to kill me.” Looking the other girl square in the eye: “And because no one else was going to.”

 

That’s the one thing that’s always troubled her about Shadow-walker, and the final piece to fall into place when Genai revealed her identity. As an agent, she’d seemed unstoppable -- un _touchable_. Cleverer and quicker and always ten steps ahead of the warriors sent to capture her.

 

So why hadn’t _she_ killed Nia?

 

The only possible answer was that Lexa told her not to. Klark doesn’t even need the flicker of Costia’s gaze for confirmation.

 

Stupid. Oh, Klark _gets_ it -- love, and all of that. She and the Commander must truly share something special, for her safety to be prioritized above the possible political gains of Nia’s death. Or... well, from another perspective, there had been no clear gain: anyone replacing Nia would have been raised up in her image, and perhaps even regicide would have failed to bring about a change.

 

But knowing what Klark knows of this woman, and standing in her presence for mere minutes, she can already see how the edict could have ended in disaster. Denied direct action, the Shadow-walker would have had to get creative -- and that’s exactly what she _had_ done, pulling bigger and bigger stunts, trying to finish off Nia through sheer aggravation. If it had continued, who knows what risks she would have taken.

 

So, love can sometimes make Lexa stupid. It’s worth tucking away into the back of her brain, although Klark isn’t sure how she’ll be able to use it.

 

“It’s probably for the best,” she tells Costia. “If you hadn’t been so careful, _you_ might have ended up being Queen.”

 

Sheer panic flashes across the face of the tall Woods Clan man standing at attention. Costia looks a bit unnerved herself. The atmosphere around the six of them feels considerably less tense.

 

“Will you sit with us?” Klark asks. She thinks she’d like more opportunities to make these stone-faced people break.

 

“I... no,” Costia says, “thank you. The three of us are leaving Polis in an hour.”

 

Klark’s heart sinks. “Don’t,” she blurts out, surging to her feet. “Stay. Another day at least. I’ve wanted to talk with you for a while, now.”

 

It’s true. Klark didn’t just beg every warrior in her court for every tale they’d ever heard of Shadow-walker just because she wanted to be prepared, should the agent return to the Ice Nation.

 

Costia gives her a long look. Whatever she finds in Klark’s face makes her hesitant for the first time. “No,” she says gently. “Not now. But perhaps... another day. Perhaps our travels will take us closer to _your_ court.”

 

Klark meets the challenge in the other girl’s eyes by raising her head even higher. “You would be welcome. And I think you'd be surprised how many people are eager to greet you.”

 

“Hmm,” Costia says, thoughtful. She turns and begins to make her way out.

 

Only to stop and turn back.

 

“She chose you,” she calls back to Klark.

 

She uses the Ice Nation’s language -- Klark doesn’t think anyone but herself, Genai, and Trest would understand it among those in the hall. It isn’t spoken often outside their clan, but Costia’s accent is perfect.

 

“Just in case you’re tempted to think, later on, that I made the choice for her,” Costia continues. “That she pushed you away, or ran from you. She did those things. But before all that, and after all that, she chose you. In every way that mattered.”

 

She turns on her heel and walks out before Klark has a chance to catch her breath in the wake of it.

 

Everyone in the hall is staring. Thankfully, they seem just as confused as Klark -- she was right in suspecting no one else would understand Costia. Not that _Klark_ understands. Slowly, she sinks back into her seat.

 

Trest looks back at her with similar bewilderment.

 

But Genai.

 

Genai is looking fixedly at her empty plate, fiddling with her eating knife. Her lower lip is caught between her teeth.

 

“Genai.”

 

The bodyguard starts, and then guiltily raises her eyes.

 

“What _haven’t_ you been telling me?”

 

* * *

 

 

Klark banishes Genai to the barracks with the rest of the Ice Nation warriors, choosing to take only Trest as protection when she retreats to her room. They both know if she was _really_ angry, she would have chosen another bonded pair to play bodyguard for the remainder of the Summit -- as long as Klark keeps her second, Genai hasn’t completely fallen from grace.

 

Not that she isn’t angry enough.

 

But it’s not Genai’s fault. Not completely. Klark could have asked to know more than what was immediately necessary. She could have poked at her own memory. She could have found out, before now, in whose tent her double slept for so many nights.

 

Why didn’t she?

 

She paces the length of her room. She knows the _details_ of the rumors are false. The Commander would never. Lexa is not her favorite person, but Klark does know her. She would never have Klark share her bed in any but the most literal sense, no matter what rituals the Woods Clan believes in, knowing Klark herself was not... aware. That isn’t the girl Klark met, and two years is not enough to change a person so deeply. And even though it makes Klark scowl until a headache tugs at her temples, she suspects any tent or bed-sharing was only to serve the greater plan of bringing down the Mountain. She has no idea _how_. But that would also be too believable of the girl Klark knew.

 

It’s not the obviously false rumors that bother her. It’s what fuels them: the belief that Klark, _Klark_ , is at the center of this schism between Costia and the Commander. Genai swore that last part was true, Costia had given back a -- a ring, of some sort, a token that lent her the Commander’s power? She’d done _something_ that made everyone certain it was over between them. Which meant dozens of lore-singers had to find new material.

 

... or maybe they’d just add a coda about Klark, and how the Ice Nation is treacherous and scheming still.

 

Klark pauses to kick a chair across the room. She can’t _believe_ this. Even Costia seemed to think -- no, no it had to be some massive misunderstanding, of proportions more suited to a comic play than this... This was Klark’s life, what did Lexa think she was doing? How could she have possibly allowed Costia, of all people, to believe something like that?  

 

Of course Klark is familiar with the fancies Lexa will allow others to believe, if it ultimately benefits her. But she really did think there were limits. Scruples.

 

There’s a mirror in the corner, pitted and dark. It catches her reflection and Klark is caught staring at herself, a fist pressed to her mouth and breathing hard.

 

What if it’s true?

 

She wants to throw back the thought as quickly as it surfaces from the turmoil in her mind, but she pauses.

 

Considers.

 

... what if it’s true?

 

What if Lexa really has fallen for Klark’s double?

 

It seems impossible. But then, so does the Shadow-walker abandoning her lover and relinquishing her claim to the queen of the _Ice Nation_. So does projecting one’s soul from one world into another, and to bring down an enemy that terrorized the clans for generations.

 

And when she thinks of it that way, she imagine how it might happen. Lexa has shaped the course of her life around the Mountain: forced the Coalition into existence for it, given up personal vendettas for the sake of it. Maybe she really could love with the girl who destroyed it.

 

But that girl is gone.

 

A knock at the door makes Klark jump. She presses her hands to her face, feeling the heat in her cheeks as she forces herself to calm down. Shaking back her hair, she walks over to open her door.

 

Trest is on the other side, looking miserable. She sees the reason why over his shoulder: a Sky Person.

 

“He won’t leave,” Trest says in a whisper. “I keep _telling_ him --”

 

But Trest is still working on learning the Woods Clan’s language, forget the Mountain’s. Klark doubts the Sky People speak any dialects found on the ground. She gives Trest a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

 

“No visitors,” she says to the Sky Person behind him. “Go away.”

 

The Sky Person grabs the door to keep her from closing it, and then blinks to find her knife nudging into his solar plexus.

 

“I, uh -- wow. Wow, you weren’t kidding. Please don’t kill me.”

 

“Go _away_.” He speaks a lot more quickly than she’s used to, but she doesn’t think her accent is that bad. He shouldn’t have so much trouble understanding.

 

“Listen, one second. Just let me show you something. Okay?” He releases the door and holds his hands up, wide and empty.

 

Klark gives him a second once-over. He’s tall, with close-cropped hair and dark skin, but he doesn’t move at all like someone trying to impress their body’s advantages on others. His hands have no weapon callouses, and the line of his shoulders is soft. But as he watches her closely she gets the sense of calculating intelligence behind his eyes. Despite his attempts to stop her from closing whatever doors she wants to be closed.

 

Klark nods and lets the hand with the knife drop to her side. Word in the Tower is that they’re not supposed to kill or maim the Sky visitors just yet, anyway. But she doesn’t sheathe it.

 

The Sky Person notices. He moves even more slowly and deliberately as he reaches inside his jacket, and her estimation of his intelligence goes up another notch.

 

He brings out a thin rectangle, white-ish and crumbled at the corners. “This is for you.”

 

“From you?”

 

“No.” His eyes flicker. “From _you_. The um, the other you.”

 

... huh.

 

She tucks her knife back into her belt and stands to the side. “Come in.”

 

He does so warily. Klark nods at Trest before closing the door between them.

 

“Sit?” she asks the Sky Person, indicating a small table in the corner. He does, and she drags the second chair over from the other side of the room. It wobbles -- one of the legs bent when she kicked it -- but holds her.

 

She indicates herself. “Klark. My name.”

 

He blinks at her again. “I know that. I... oh. I’m. I’m Wells.”

 

“Wells,” she repeats, and he stares at her some more. Lacking the words, she gestures at the object still in his hands.

 

“Oh.” He shakes off his befuddlement and lays it on the table between them. “Here.”

 

Klark looks at it, then back at him, then down at the object. “What is it?”

 

“A letter, from her. See, it’s,” he reaches to fumble it open: it expands, showing her the dark marks on the brighter surface, “it’s a letter.”

 

He holds it open, expectant.

 

“You can read?” Klark asks.

 

“No, I didn’t read it, I promise. She gave it to me the night before the attack on the Mountain. She... I didn’t really know her, I mean you, in this world, but she said we knew each other in hers, so. She trusted me to give it to you. Once she left.”

 

“No, no.” Klark shakes her head and repeats, hoping he’ll really listen to the words: “You can read.”

 

She can see the moment comprehension hits, his eyes widening. “You can’t.”

 

Klark shrugs. She’s heard of the practice of making words out of designs, but it’s not something the Ice Nation does. Or any of the clans that she knows of. It's very... _Mountain_ : hoarding words and wisdom like that, making it so much harder to share. She never wanted to learn the trick of it herself.

 

“Oh. Okay.” He looks down at the -- letter -- in his hands. “Do you think she knew that? I think she knew that.” He squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath.

 

“So,” when he opens his eyes again, “I’m guessing almost no one in this building knows how to read English. Except me, of course.”

 

Klark tilts her head at him.

 

“And anyone else from the Ark, but are _they_ suckers? Probably not,” he mutters. “Would you -- would it be okay if I read it to you?”

 

“Please.” It’s easier to smile at him than expected. He seems just as frustrated with Klark’s double as she is, which, in comparison to all the worship and acclaim...

 

“Okay. Here we go.” He clears his throat as he picks up the paper. “ _I don't know how to write this letter.”_

 

He halts, and it’s clear he’s as embarrassed as Klark is in this moment. “Are you sure this is okay?”

 

“No.” Klark tries to compose herself. “But please. Go.”

 

He gives her a sympathetic look. And Klark... Klark wonders if her other self knew it would be like this. If she knew the two of them would be gentler to each other with this introduction of awkwardness.

 

It’s pretty clever, actually.

 

It’s reassuring to know they aren’t so different.

 

“ _I want you to know,_ ” Wells resumes, “ _the only thing getting me through is that you probably feel the same way about reading it._..”

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

The irony is that she doesn’t have much to do during the Summit. Ice Nation is fantastically isolated -- and fragmented, but she hopes that isn’t as understood by outsiders -- and aside from border negotiations there’s very little to discuss with other clan leaders. A few of them are interested in the resources Ice Nation could offer in future, such as pelts or ivory, but there’s no established market. More than a few are interested in expanding _their_ markets, but out of every ten merchants to approach her only one or two are willing to venture travel that far north with their wares. Even the more adventurous seem deterred by Klark’s honest account of the conditions they’ll face: the distance between settlements, winter storms and blinding summer sun, the language barrier. Nia used the self-reliant nature of the Ice Nation to her advantage, perhaps stressed it to the breaking point, but it hardly began with her.

 

“But your capital city,” someone -- a merchant-prince from Delphi -- protests, his long nails painted the colors of guild alliances. “You could establish it as the center of trade, allow our people to create a home for themselves under your wing.”

 

Klark shakes her head. “The Ice Court isn’t like your cities. There’s an established hall for waiting out the winter storms, but the rest of the year we follow the animals as they migrate, or to avoid the worst weather. Even the settlements shift within their territories according to the demands of the land. See,” and she shrugs off her jacket to show them her shoulder tattoo, the stark design of fish and fowl contained by the swirl of water, or air currents. She talks about their way of life and how it contains a promise to the land itself, the recognition their survival could only result from learning its ways and whims. Other clans might cut roads into the earth and build towers that tapped against the sky; they could try to tame their world. The North was wild, would always be wild, and anyone who made it their home must take that wildness into their heart.

 

She can see some of them don’t like it, walk away from her shaking her heads and abandoning their half-formed plans of remapping the North with their trade. Her heart aches for the the possibilities she might be losing for her people -- diplomacy was Roan’s gift, not hers. (Ugh, Roan. She has to deal with him, eventually.) Maybe if she were softer, presented herself with more compromise... But Klark is proud of her people. She’s proud of their lives.

 

And it isn’t lost on everyone. All the Boat People ambassadors recognize her on sight and clasp her hand in friendship. A village leader from Rock Line doesn’t say much, but nods thoughtfully every time Klark pauses for breath. A Plains Rider warrior is so openly appreciative of Klark’s shoulder tattoo, Klark shows her where its sibling begins at her waist: dense forests and furred predators that clamber down the curve of her thigh. The horse-sister traces a bold line at Klark’s hipbone, making Klark’s stomach muscles jump.

 

So Klark appreciates the opportunity connect with leaders and peoples from clans she hasn’t seen since her coronation. She’s grateful to be able to share more of her people, to help the slow process of moving Ice Nation from a place of fear to familiarity in other’s minds.

 

She’s also aware she’s playing right into the Commander’s hands.

 

Her presence at the Summit is beneficial, of course. But it mostly benefits _Lexa_. Behold: the savage nation and its wild queen that Lexa brought to heel. Well, brought into the Coalition. But hadn’t Klark sworn her fealty? And now, hadn’t she brought down the Mountain for Lexa?

 

So when the final day and audience of the Summit arrives, the meeting that requires the presence of every clan leader or representative, Klark decides to go all in.

 

She left her formal robes at Court, but her pack contains a mantle stitched from the pelt of an ocean-biter. The fur has a translucent quality, not pure white like her robes. It makes the black pads of the intact claws that much more stark where they fasten at her collarbone, and picks up the hue of the gold-dipped claws. Genai, back in good graces, helps Klark fasten thick leather bands around her biceps tooled with her story -- her birth and Nia’s rage on her right arm, her return and Nia’s death on her left. It’s too hot for her furred boots. It’s too hot for any of it, but Klark is determined. As a final touch Genai brings out the paint made from white chalk dust all Ice Nation warriors wear into battle and streaks Klark’s face: three parallel lines on her untattooed cheek, and one more down the part in her hair. She adds gold flakes to the center part as well, careful with their trembling delicacy until they settle into the paint.

 

People stop and stare as she walks through the tower to the throne room, and the other clan leaders aren’t much better when she enters. Klark is the last one to arrive-- even Lexa is seated in a chair of warped and twisted wood on a raised dias. Klark drops into her own chair, deliberately insolent as she raises her eyes to meet the Commander’s.

 

 _You wanted a captive barbarian_ , she thinks. _You’ve got her._

 

It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since Klark woke at the Mountain. If Klark’s intimidating facade has done its work -- if she’s gained back whatever she lost in estimation when she awoke confused and forgetful with her head in Lexa’s lap -- it doesn’t show in the Commander’s expression. There’s only a flutter at the base of her throat as she swallows.

 

“Greetings to the Queen of the Ice Nation,” the Commander says, sounding a bit gravelly. “Who has at last honored us with her presence.”

 

Klark can see Wells struggle to contain a grin. He looks nice as well. They couldn’t give him any Ice Nation apparel, or it might give away their game, but Genai suggested patching and re-dyeing his own clothing as a quick fix. It was odd attire to begin with: made well enough to endure but flimsy and unnatural-feeling in a way that made her fingers itch when she touched it.

 

“Artificial fibers,” he’d explained cheerfully when he saw her do it. “We couldn’t grow cotton or use animal pelts in space, so we figured out how to made fabric from, uh, do you know the word _plastic_?”

 

She didn’t, but she had a vague picture of what he could mean. “But how did you keep warm?”

 

Raven, sitting over on her own bed and fiddling with something comprised of gears and scrap metal -- Woods Clan territory especially was littered with this kind of debris from the world before -- had snorted. “Who said we were?”

 

Klark liked Raven from the moment Wells introduced her. They were the two youngest among the contingent from the Sky People, but clearly the most at ease in Polis. Wells was the de-facto leader, explaining he’d been commissioned by their Chancellor to see to their interests during the Summit because of his familiarity with the issues at work. Raven’s presence in the Woods Clan city was never fully explained, but Klark has known enough loss to take one look at the girl and know: whoever her home used to be, they’re no longer around to run to.

 

It’s good for her, listening to them talk about where they came from. Her mind still balks at the idea of tons and tons of metal _floating_ in space, so she concentrates on the stories of the people inside it: the hope and hardship. Never having enough of anything.

 

It isn’t the same, Klark had thought, asking careful questions of them both and learning their different perspectives of life among the stars. (She thinks Wells learns a lot as well, listening to Raven.) But it’s similar enough to make her understand why her other self would fight so hard, would take over Klark and Klark’s life for a time, in order to protect these people. She visits whenever she can, despite Genai’s mutterings about taking in strays. She feels like she fits better into her own skin each time.

 

She throws Wells a wink now, appreciating how the newly crisp black of his clothes compliments his natural air of authority. The Commander clears her throat and resumes the meeting.

 

The last day, and the last audience, has much less structure than the previous days of the Summit. This is the opportunity for the clan leaders and representatives to speak their concerns directly to the Commander, bringing any business they don’t feel has been thoroughly addressed. Most of it is leaders complaining about the details of deals already reached, and Klark watches as Lexa works to shut them down without outright offense. There are a few genuine concerns placed on the table, though, and Klark tracks the movement of the sun across the sky through the wide, curtained windows. She waits.

 

Finally, the Commander sighs. “Well, if that’s all the business for toda--”

 

Klark stands.

 

 _I don’t know what memories you’ll keep,_ the letter had said. _I got pieces of yours when I needed them. So if you’re the same, you should know the most important things right away._

 

“Ice Nation calls to abolish the nightblood tradition,” she says, and has the distinct pleasure of watching shock spread over Lexa’s face.

 

“The Sky People second.” Out of the corner of her eye Klark sees Wells rise to his feet, standing with his arms held behind his back. “Along with the Mountain.”

 

“Sky People speak for the Mountain, now?” the Commander snaps out. Her eyes don’t leave Klark.

 

“... no.” Wells grimaces. “But it was hard enough to make them agree to the Persephone Project. They wouldn’t have agreed to a foster program if they knew it meant throwing their children into a competitive blood sport. But if you want word on it, I sent a letter, I should hear back soo--”

 

“Sky Nation is not part of the Coalition,” the Commander cuts in. She glares at Wells. “No one outside the Coalition has influence over what governs it, or how. And this is _Woods Clan_ tradition.”

 

“It _was_ ,” Klark says. “But now you’ve brought us together. We are one people, united.” More or less. “Can you promise no nightblood children will be born outside of your clan?”

 

Lexa’s hands tighten on arms of her throne until the knuckles are white, and Klark knows she can’t.

 

“Ice Nation wants an amendment to the laws surrounding nightbloods and the process of their conclave. We understand the seriousness of changing another clan’s traditions, but if these things affect other children, from other clans, then it is no longer a Woods Clan concern.”

 

Lexa rises to her feet. She’s composed -- Klark wonders whether there’s ever a time when she isn’t -- but with a palpable sense of coiled fury. And, tucked right behind the hard look in her eyes, the barest flicker of shame.

 

That’s what convinced Klark to do it this way, instead of hacking down the door to Lexa’s room and hashing it out at the top of her lungs. Lexa may not love being confronted like this, in public, but the audience means Klark is that much less likely to take out her knives. She’s pretty sure she’d still lose a fight against Lexa. But _gods;_  after that letter, she wants one.

 

But the letter’s contents -- and the shadowy memories it dredged up, the flicker of Lexa’s face turning away, a tattooed back bared to candlelight -- made it clear that wasn’t the way to get results.

 

“Perhaps our ways seem harsh to outsiders,” Lexa says, and if she isn’t careful Klark _will_ take a swing at her, “but they were understood by those who joined this Coalition when they entered our ranks. They were a known risk. What precedent does it set, if we allow the traditions of other clans to be changed on the whim of one person?”

 

“The other clan leaders knew,” Klark concedes. “I’m sure knowledge of the conclave reached some even within the Ice Nation.”

 

Genai had known. When Klark found that out it led to the worst fight they’d ever had: no shouting, no slammed doors, just a long night of strained and quiet conversation. It was the first time Klark had ever truly considered releasing Genai from her service. Even though she had decided against it, their interactions had been tentative, ever since.

 

But in the end Klark had to accept that, from Genai’s perspective, she had done the right thing in keeping the facts of the conclave away from her queen. Knowing Klark, Genai had anticipated her anger and resistance, how it might have affected her actions and even split her focus in those crucial months after Klark’s coronation.

 

And it wasn’t as if Klark could tell her, now, that Genai’s assumptions were all wrong.

 

“Are those the only reasons you didn’t tell me?” Klark had asked. The candles had burned down to nubs at that point, the best source of light in the room being the silvery shadows of the dawn coming through the window. “And, I’m assuming, warned the rest of the Court not to mention it?”

 

Genai had been silent for a long moment. Shutting her eyes, speaking with an honest and obvious reluctance (the defining factor in Klark’s later decision to keep her as a bodyguard), she had admitted: “I also didn’t want any more reasons for you to come to the Commander’s attention.”

 

Klark waits until she has Lexa’s full attention now -- waits until the other girl looks right into her eyes -- before saying softly: “But _I_ didn’t know.”

 

Neither had her double. Lexa had decided to enlighten _her_. Not Klark.

 

Lexa’s jaw clenches. Klark can guess what she wants to say: it was Klark’s responsibility to know, to investigate and discover. Ignorance is not a shield from duty.

 

But Lexa also knows there was a concerted effort to keep Klark ignorant -- because she played her own part in it.

 

She can hardly scold Klark for being successfully tricked, can she?

 

“I think it’s time for Woods Clan to reconsider the tradition for their own sake,” Klark continues. “Without an enemy to unite us, it’s inevitable there will be more discord between the clans. Surely, Woods Clan wants to ensure no one can usurp the line of succession -- by stealing away and raising their own nightblood, according to their own agenda, for instance.”

 

And if that never occurred to any of the other clans leaders -- any except Nia -- they were certainly thinking about it _now_. Lexa’s eyes narrow.

 

“After all, if it becomes more and more possible for nightbloods to be born outside of Woods Clan, they might encounter more people who, like me, don’t know the laws of your clan surrounding them.” The effort to sound nonchalant leaves her a little light-headed as she says: “I hear every single Woods Clan warrior has pledged to hunt down anyone who kills a nightblood outside of the conclave.”

 

“Yes,” Lexa says, barely more than a whisper.

 

“Imagine what tragedy could result from those misunderstandings.” The other clan leaders murmur their discussions. Klark can’t imagine any one of them enjoys the thought of their own subjects put to death by the Woods Clan, no matter the reason.

 

Because that’s the only punishment for killing a nightblood: death. That had been another shock from Genai, and even after the bodyguard left for her own rooms Klark had been unable to find sleep. Instead she spent a long time looking down at her hands in the early morning light, remembering when they had been black with blood.

 

How Lexa had scoured them clean.

 

The murmurs are rising in volume, becoming grumbling and dissent.

 

“Enough,” Lexa cuts through it. “Your motion has been heard and will be taken under consideration. A resolution will be reached between Woods Clan elders and clan leaders at next year’s Summit.” She sweeps the room with a cool glance. “You can trust me to stay alive until then. But this year’s Summit has officially concluded. Thank you for your presence and contributions; you are all dismissed. Not you,” she adds darkly to Klark. Her eyes are hard.

 

They wait until everyone else has filed out of the throne room, each still standing before the other. Wells catches Klark’s eye before he leaves, making a funny little gesture -- holding his hand flat, he touches his forehead before jerking it away. The look on his face is one of reassurance, so she nods back.

 

Lexa also nods to the guards at the door, who switch to their stations just outside. The sound of the double doors closing behind them feels like it echoes in the empty space.

 

“Have you told anyone?”

 

She means Genai. If Genai knows that Klark killed a nightblood.

 

“No.” Klark has learned some discretion in the last almost-two years. Some.

 

Lexa closes her eyes, and the tension in her carriage lessens, slightly. “You play a dangerous game,” she breathes out.

 

“ _Me_?” Klark’s stomach twists. “It wasn’t a secret I killed Ontari. What if Genai had known what she was? What if _anyone_ in the Court had known?”

 

“They might have,” Lexa says, surprisingly candid.

 

“Then why --”

 

“Because if any of them came forward they would have been forced to share the same punishment. If they knew Nia deliberately subverted the conclave, and said nothing, Woods Clan would claim their lives as well.”

 

Klark mulls this over. “I wondered why you didn’t have them bring back the body.”

 

“Truthfully, we didn’t have enough horses.” Lexa turns and makes her way back to her throne, crossing one long leg over the other as she relaxes back into it. “Not with the children, and not after the long ride they’d already had. If we wanted to get you back to camp before dawn it made sense to leave her on top of that cliff.”

 

“Where no one would ever find her.”

 

“Not before the body would be past the point of... identification."

 

Klark shakes her head. “You could have just told me.”

 

The Commander gives her a look.

 

“Don’t you _dare_ , Lexa,” Klark snaps. The other girl blinks at her, but Klark has no time to consider how easily she uses the name, still. “You weren’t doing me any favors. You left me ignorant, which made me _vulnerable_ , and all because you _knew_ what I would do once I heard of the nightbloods.”

 

“I didn’t know. But I could guess.”

 

“And you didn’t want to deal with it. With me.”

 

“I didn’t want to bind your hands and feet, tie you on a lead to my saddle, and drag you back to Polis as a prisoner. I didn’t want to leave your people leaderless, and fractured.” Lexa lets that sink in before asking coldly: “Is that what _you_ wanted?”

 

Klark clenches her hands into fists. “You’re changing the subject.”

 

“There is no way -- _none_ \-- that we could have hidden where your new awareness of nightbloods had come from. You had already declared your intentions to join the Coalition, and then to change your mind the morning after? Everything would have been discovered.”

 

“Please,” Klark sneered. “You wanted a secure leader of my clan, and you wanted her fealty. Don’t pretend you did this for _me_.”

 

Lexa sighs, slumping a little where she sits on her throne. “I never have just one reason for what I decide to do,” she says, subdued. “I weigh whatever might be at stake, and I try to find the best solution from there.”

 

There’s an echo in her words that makes Klark pause. Lexa doesn’t say it arrogantly, or even proudly -- more like someone who is exhausted beyond the telling of it.

 

“Even when it goes against your own laws?” she finds herself asking, and more gently than she meant to.

 

“Her _existence_ went against our laws. Nia withheld her from the last conclave to give her that much longer to train, to prepare. None of the current nightbloods are older than twelve. If I’d died, she would have slaughtered them.” Her expression is a careful blank. “She was already dead. There was nothing to be gained, and too much to lose, by seeking justice.”

 

Klark can’t fault her reasoning. But even in the face of such practicality, she can just about remember -- amidst the pain in her head, the cold of the falling snow -- Lexa’s words: _never been two nightbloods of an age alive, like this._

 

The moment passes, and Lexa straightens. “It’s been decided and done for a long time.” She casts a gaze up at Klark through her eyelashes. “Don’t think you can use it to your advantage.”

 

Anger flares up in her as fresh as when the letter first set it alight. “You talk like you want those children to die.”

 

She regrets it as soon as she says it. Even before she sees how Lexa takes it. Klark isn’t sure what she’s seeing on Lexa’s face, but she is sure she never wants to see it there again.

 

“I am the Commander of the Woods Clan and the head of the Coalition,” Lexa says, low and terrible. “Very little of my life is about what I _want_.”

 

“You can’t -- do you honestly believe that? You make it sound like you have _less_ power, in the end.”

 

“No,” Lexa says reluctantly. “It’s not that. But I can’t destabilize my people’s lives on a whim. You’re talking about traditions that have defined and sustained them since the fall of the old world.”

 

Klark thinks back to Lexa illuminated by firelight, her own face stinging with the newness of her tattoo. “You can’t build a new world out of blood.” Lexa knows this, she told Klark -- why is she still --

 

Lexa raises her chin. “Sacrifices have to be made.”

 

\-- oh.

 

Oh. Lexa is never going to admit, on her own, that this is an unacceptable sacrifice. Because it was asked of _her_. And she will never admit it was too much.

 

That’s not how she sees the world.

 

Klark has to harden her heart before she continues. “I’m not letting go of this. I managed to sow enough doubt among the other clan leaders after just a few days of learning the truth. Imagine what I can do a year from now.”

 

Wariness creeps over Lexa’s face. “A year --”

 

“Next year’s Summit. I’m going to be here, whatever messages you send.” Lexa flinches, and Klark takes the opportunity to press on: “We both know this has to be done. It might not be easy, but -- it _has_ to be done. Use me, if it helps. Call me a savage who refuses to be reasoned with, if they need someone to hate. But by this time next year your people will have a new ritual of succession, or else.”

 

“Or else what?” Lexa doesn’t appear to be angered at the pronouncement. Curious, more like, as if Klark were handing her a puzzle-toy she had yet to solve.

 

“Or I’ll cede from the Coalition and declare Ice Nation to be a sanctuary for any nightblood who claims it.”

 

Lexa props her chin in her hand, fingers tapping her cheek. “They are -- _we_ are raised to put leadership above our own safety. I doubt they’d take your offer.”

 

Klark quirks an eyebrow. She knows all about being raised to claim a destiny -- and what it feels like when expectation meets the reality of command. “Really? In all the records of conclaves, not one nightblood has tried to run?”

 

Lexa’s face betrays nothing. But her fingers stop tapping.

 

Oh. Oh, there’s _something_ there. And whatever it is, Lexa kept it from Klark’s double as well -- Klark knows immediately.

 

She’s more than a little pleased to think she ferreted something out of the Commander even her other self didn’t catch.

 

“I’ll inform my generals,” Lexa says abruptly, sitting back in her throne. “None of this will be easy, you understand.”

 

Easy. Klark thinks of the past few days -- what she can remembers of them, that is -- and has to swallow down a fairly bitter laugh. “I understand.”

 

“How --” Lexa cuts herself off, shifting in her seat. She looks uncertain. “How did you find out? Who told you about the nightbloods? You said it had only been a few days.”

 

“ _She_ did.” Klark gives a wry grin and points at herself.

 

Lexa blinks. “I... what?”

 

“She wrote me a letter and asked a friend among the Sky People to deliver it.”

 

“She... wrote...” Lexa is pure confusion. “You can’t read their language.”

 

“No, but her messenger could.”

 

And it’s worth it. Oh, it’s worth how manipulated Klark felt, once she figured it out, to see _Lexa’s_ epiphany. The way her mouth falls all the way open.

 

In that moment, Klark forgives her double quite a bit.

 

“What else did she tell you?” asks Lexa, keen-eyed in her quick recovery.

 

“N-nothing,” Klark lies badly, caught off guard. Lexa doesn’t press her, but she doesn’t look convinced.

 

“How much do you remember, then?” she asks.

 

“I...” She’s not sure how to explain it. Everything, but nothing -- it’s all _there_ , somewhere, she can tell, as if all the things that happened when someone else was in control of her body left the memories as a courtesy gift. Only they put them into a box: a box which rattles and growls but doesn’t open, and Klark isn’t sure she wants to let out whatever lives inside. “Not much.”

 

“Do you remember _her_ at all?”

 

Klark doesn’t know how to talk about that either. How sometimes she’ll catch a corner of her her own reflection and startle, as if... as if she’s expecting it to resolve into someone else. Or the itch of loneliness, after.

 

Which is ridiculous, and she’s not going to talk about that to the Commander of all people. It’s ridiculous to be lonely inside your own head.

 

“I’m sorry she’s gone, for your sake,” Klark says instead. “She was a powerful ally.”

 

Lexa frowns. “As are you,” she says after a moment.

 

“Not in the same way. I don’t understand the Mountain or the Sky People like she did.”

 

“No, but neither of them are... as great a concern, now.” Lexa clears her throat, places her hands on the arms of her throne. “Which brings me to -- I didn’t think I would be asking you under these circumstances, but... you might stay a few days longer, even with the Summit concluded. I know your journey is far and you have to reach your Court before the snows begin,” she presses forward, when Klark would have spoken, “but because it _is_ such a rare opportunity, having you this far south, we should take advantage of it. The Ice Nation has been part of my Coalition for almost two years, but I know so little of your ways. I thought -- I hoped -- you might take time to correct that.”

 

Klark thought she was in control of herself, but bitterness pulls the corner of her mouth down even as she struggles for composure. “Your ignorance is your own fault, Lexa.”

 

Lexa jerks a little, stung. “I know that. I only thought --”

 

“Do you?” Klark interrupts. “It was your choice to -- we were always _there_ ,” waiting, wondering, abandoned, “it was you who kept yourself apart. It doesn’t matter,” she says, a little too loudly, when it seems like Lexa would break in. “It’s done. You can’t make up two years in two days, and we’re leaving tomorrow morning.”

 

She turns on her heel and heads for the double doors. The moment her hand touches the battered wood to push them open, she pauses.

 

Klark was sometimes so lonely growing up her whole body ached with it. She would lay down, frozen ground at her back and above her endless sky, and let the weight of it pin her in place. It felt like the only way to keep herself from flying into a million pieces.

 

And yet. _She_ was never asked to kill her closest companions, or grew up knowing she would be their death or they would be hers. She thinks that must be a kind of loneliness beyond even her comprehension.

 

The glimpse of Lexa’s face she caught before turning would confirm that.

 

So Klark turns back.

 

“I meant what I said before,” she tells Lexa, who’s standing in front of her throne now. “I know the two of you shared a lot. I know you were close.”

 

She also knows, from what Genai has told her, that Woods Clan believes... _things_ , about those souls which travel. She knows who Lexa thinks she sees when she looks at Klark, the way she is now. It makes her angry, _so angry_ , and she isn’t even sure why. What do the stupid superstitions of a southern clan matter to her?

 

Her words give Lexa pause. “I know there are rumors among the warriors,” she says. “I never assumed you would think they were true.”

 

“I don’t, but.” Klark draws a deep breath. “Costia came to talk to me.”

 

Lexa closes her eyes, her head falling back. “I’ll kill her,” she says quietly.

 

“No, she didn’t... she didn’t say anything. But between that and. Other things. I guessed.”

 

“Klark,” as Lexa raises her head, “I didn’t fall in love with -- with the person you think of as your other self.”

 

Something changes in her demeanor. Her stance isn’t as formal, and for the first time -- for the first time _ever_ , with Lexa -- Klark has the feeling she’s seeing the other girl with her guard truly down.

 

“Oh.” There are too many emotions coursing through Klark right now to parse them properly. Relief, mainly. Although with an aftertaste of resentment, which makes no _sense._ But something in her unclenches. This is... good, it means there won’t be that awkwardness between them. That’s why it’s good.

 

“I fell in love with _you_ ,” Lexa says.

 

Klark’s head jerks up, and her heart pounds so strongly she wonders if Lexa can hear it. It sinks in the next moment -- of course, that damn Woods Clan belief, of _course_ \-- and she has to fight through the sensation of heaviness to say: “Commander, don’t --”

 

“I’ve been in love with you since your coronation.”

 

Finally, all Klark can do is stare.

 

“I’m sorry I hid it from you,” Lexa continues. “I have a lot to apologize for. I’m not proud of what I did to... to try and protect you, and others. Good intentions are no excuse for any hurt I might have caused you.” Her mouth twists. “That I have caused you.”

 

Klark is frozen, netted and pinned like prey.

 

“I know now that you deserve the truth more than anything. I’ve been in love with you since... I don’t know the exact moment. But once I did know, I felt I had to promise to stay away from you.” She doesn’t say to who, but Klark doesn’t need the hint to conjure up Costia, her air of an opponent relinquishing the field. “I thought that would make things better.”

 

“You thought you could _stop_ loving me?” Klark asks haltingly.

 

“No,” Lexa says. “But I thought I could live a life apart from that love.” She swallows. “I failed. I thought... but when I knew I would see you again, I...” She raises her eyes to Klark’s. “I’m not asking anything of you. I know I don’t have that right.”

 

“What are you saying?” 

 

Lexa shrugs, smiles: a beautiful, slow-blossoming thing that transforms her entire face. “That I love you. Not because our souls are tied. Because... because you’re foolish, and stubborn, and proud, and are incapable of being graceful in the face of defeat. Or even victory.”

 

This at last manages to unthaw Klark. “Hey --”

 

“And because you will fight for what you believe is right until your body drops. Because the world has given you so much anger, and instead of being crippled by it, you make it into a weapon. Because,” her breath hitches, “loving you has undone my entire life, and I don’t regret it. As long as you are in my life.”

 

Klark opens her mouth, closes it. Tries to brings some moisture to a mouth gone dry. “I...”

 

Lexa waits, attentive.

 

“I have to go,” Klark says, and flees.

  __

* * *

 

 

 

It’s early evening, and when she walks into her rooms she finds Genai packing the last of her things into their bags. All that remains are the necessities for the morning.

 

“The last audience ran later than expected,” she says as Klark comes into the room, not turning around. “Did Broadleaf try to sneak their trade sanctions through again?”

 

... they had, actually, but: “Lexa wanted a private audience.”

 

She watches Genai’s back go rigid, her movements halting. She resumes packing a second later. “You really shouldn’t use that name where other people -- people who don’t know you -- might hear. They might jump to conclusions.”

 

Like they had done, these past weeks when someone less apt to be guided by Genai had been living in Klark’s skin.

 

Or before that, if she’s being honest with herself. She’d been cold and concussed, and it’d been easier to forget her foggy memories of it, but: _Everyone sees the way you look at her. Everyone knows_.

 

How Echo had made her offer only _after_ the entire Court heard Lexa’s message to stay away.

 

“Genai,” and waits for the warrior to turn around. “When you said you didn’t want me brought to the Commander’s attention.”

 

“Yes?”

 

She still feels a little dizzy from Lexa’s confession, and it makes her blunt. “What were you really afraid of?”

 

Genai scowls down at her hands.

 

“I can handle unwanted advances. You know that.”

 

“I do.”

 

“So, why?” Why treat Lexa like she was diseased, why scowl and mutter in the corners, why be so damn cryptic about her concerns? Why did Genai -- fearless Genai -- almost seem scared of the Commander?

 

Genai chews on the inside of her cheek for a long moment. “I know you didn’t feel it. But you were very young when you came to us. You were little more than a child.”

 

“I was a blooded warrior. I killed twenty-six of Nia’s agents, twelve raiders, I survived Queen’s Combat --”

 

“You knew next to nothing of _people_ ,” Genai breaks in. “And even less about -- yourself, among others.”

 

“I know myself.” She looks Genai right in the eye. “I didn’t fall in love with Lexa.”

 

Genai meets her gaze. “I know that.”

 

“I _didn’t_.” She barely had the wherewithal to breathe, back then, to eat more than once a day, to catch a full night’s sleep before she had to be up and dealing with the next crisis: this settlement was scraping the last of their food reserves and it would be another two months until the snows lifted, this other settlement was warring with that one over which of them was over-hunting the area, this last settlement’s warlord fled with her coronation and now its population was terrified and divided. With Nia’s crown had come a passel of crises as her tenuous networks of fear and bribery fell apart. And then there had been those _actively_ trying to harm Klark: she’d stopped counting after the ninth assassination attempt, and that had been before Lexa had arrived for the coronation.

 

“I just...” To her dismay she can’t force back the tears coming into her eyes. “I liked her. I liked her so much.”

 

Genai doesn’t hesitate. She steps forward and wraps her arms around Klark, bringing her in so that Klark can bury her head in Genai’s front, hiding the hot tears that are beginning to escape down her cheeks.

 

“I know,” Genai soothes.  Her arms bracketing Klark feel strong enough to keep the whole world at bay, and it’s nice to pretend for a moment that Klark believes it’s true.

 

 _Very little of my life is about what I_ want.

 

Klark understands that. Even before becoming Queen she’d known she was being raised for a purpose. Hidden away from civilization, training every day -- none of that had been what she wanted. It prepared her for more of the same when she became the queen: knowing what she could and could not ask of her people, what she could and could not ask for herself.

 

Lexa of the Woods Clan loved Costia. That was the first thing Klark learned of her, after the fact she was the Commander.

 

And she was... where should Klark begin. She was the leader of a clan whose enmity with Klark’s was legendary -- Nia had made it worse, but Ice Nation and Woods Clan had always been too much strength with too little space between them. But even “too little” space translated to too _far_ _away_. There was no chance to share each other’s lives. They were both needed -- so badly needed -- by others, elsewhere.

 

Klark had known that. She’d known it before unfriendly green eyes met hers, and the hand around her forearm tightened as Klark had lifted her head that inch farther, the day of their first meeting.

 

It was so much easier, if you knew what you couldn’t have, not to want it to begin with.

 

* * *

* * *

 

  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again with special thanks to blindwire, all remaining mistakes and typos (aaargh) being my own.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen. LISTEN.
> 
> ... I have no excuse for any of this.

 

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

It doesn’t matter, Klark tells herself the next morning. What could be, or what might have been -- what matters is what’s happening _now_. And that is: she’s leaving Polis as soon as the sun is directly overhead, and going home.

 

Which means she has to get a move on in saying her goodbyes.

 

She’s surprised to find Raven and Wells doing their own packing when she arrives at their rooms. The Tower at Polis is like its own, self-contained city; there are rooms and hallways and depths she hasn’t even had a chance to explore, having busied herself only with where her own warriors and the Sky People were quartered since arriving. She squashes that flicker of regret as she knocks on the frame of the open doorway, thinking: _you were never here to enjoy yourself._

 

“Hello,” with a little surprise at the near-empty room they shared. “I thought your people don’t leave for two days.”

 

Her English has gotten much, much better with conversational practice. It makes her head hurt, but it gave her something to throw herself into while she prepared to face off with Lexa at the last audience.

 

“They don’t.” Raven looks over at Wells, who becomes very absorbed in trying to fit a pair of boots he traded for at the Polis marketplace into his bag. The boots are beautiful, tooled and dyed leather, and he got them for one of his older jackets, covered in patches from Before. Klark had almost been disgusted the vendor had handed the boots over for so little, even if she did negotiate on Wells’ behalf, but anything Sky Person was at an all-time premium after the victory at the Mountain. “You said you asked her,” she directs at him.

 

“I said I didn’t think it would be a big deal,” he corrects, and grunts as the boots finally fit inside. He begins to tie the bag shut -- or tries. It’s fighting him.

 

Raven rolls her eyes as she turns back to Klark. “I’m sorry, I should have -- we want to come with you.”

 

“I... what?” Even with all the words she knows, sometimes they use them in an order that doesn’t add up to sense. “You want to come with me? To the Ice Nation?”

 

“Yeah. Well, maybe not forever, but as a visit.” The other girl’s face darkens, minutely. “Neither of us are crazy about going back to Camp Jaha. We already received word from Chancellor Cartwright; she says we deserve a vacation if we want it. And if it’s okay with you.”

 

Klark’s not sure about the word _vacation_ , and she’s even less sure about these two travelling north with her. That’s not their fault -- she likes them. She feels the most comfortable around them recently than anyone besides Genai or Trest, to be honest; they look at her and _see_ her, not some soul-traveller with visions of the future. Or the power to make the Commander of the twelve clans abandon her lover after years of such faithfulness it used to be the subject of story and song.

 

But she’s listened to their stories of their lives on their ship, and they were hard lives, but hardship of a specific sort. She struggles to put it into words, the ice storms so brutal their cold turns right back into burning, the winds that scream across the emptiness of the plains.

 

“It’s going to get colder,” is the best warning she can manage in their language.

 

“You’re kidding,” Raven says, mild. “It’s cold? In a place called the Ice Nation?” She turns around. “Hey, Wells. Did you hear if we head north, it’ll get colder?”

 

The ties on Wells’s bag snap: he jerks away with a yelp. “Up by the _Ice_ Nation?” he says, popping his thumb into his mouth. “Never would have guessed.”

 

Raven turns back to Klark with one eyebrow barely raised, and Klark grins back. They still seem like soft animals robbed of their protective shells to her, these Sky People, but they’re not timid. She has to honor that.

 

She has to _exhibit_ that, is what she reminds herself when she goes to the next set of rooms.

 

Roan jerks his door open before she’s finished knocking. When he sees her on the other side of it his eyes widen, and he immediately drops into the same obsequious bow that set her teeth on edge whenever he was at Court. “Your Majesty. To what do I owe this unprecedented honor?”

 

... she _does_ usually send someone else to deal with him, but does he have to --

 

 _I tried to leave anything that was just Ice Nation business to Genai,_ the letter read. _The only real change I made was reaching out to a man called Roan. I’ve never met him in my world, and I know you don’t like him. But he did good work. I think he wants to do good work._

 

Klark grits her teeth. “I wish to speak with you, if you have the time.”

 

He bows even deeper as he steps aside and lets the door fall open. His room is also clear, his bags piled and ready in one corner. There’s a table in his room as well and Klark sits without asking.

 

“I want to ask you something,” she says as he takes the opposite chair, clearly hesitant. “I have nothing to leverage your honesty, but I would advise it. It will dictate whether or not we ever talk like this again.”

 

The former prince’s eyes narrow. “If you are accusing me of ever being less than candid with my sovereign --”

 

“Stop,” Klark interrupts. “Let’s not pretend you haven’t tried to undermine my standing with foreign leaders for years--”

 

“Your Majesty gave me a mission. _You_ sent me away from the Court. You asked me to curry favor.” His dark eyes are snapping. “Are you complaining about how well I performed my duties?”

 

Klark sits forward until her elbows are on her thighs, twining her hands together in lieu of reaching out to strangle him. “You might have been successful, but it was never in my name, or to my advantage.”

 

“Perhaps if you had been less eager to send me as far away as possible, you could have been more specific in your instructions.”

 

Klark clenches her hands so tightly she feels the strain in the bone. “Just tell me, Roan: did you resent that I named Echo my heir, instead of you?”

 

As smooth as newly-oiled leather: “I would never dream to second-guess my queen’s --”

 

“That’s not what I’m asking. Were you _unhappy_ about it?”

 

The first time she heard the section of the letter about Roan, she rejected it outright. Or she tried to. She ended up stewing over it, thinking about it, tossing and turning at night to realize: he had never actually lied to her. Misled her, sometimes, and often made her so angry he managed to distract her from her original intentions. (She felt a little sick to realize where he must have gotten so good at that, and why.) If she wanted the truth, she might just be able to ask him outright.

 

He’s stone-faced for a full breath, and then two, before saying: “No.”

 

“... no?” Klark prods. “You were a prince of one of the most powerful clans, and I took away your throne. Then I promised it so it would never, under any circumstances, return to you.”

 

“Echo was a good choice for Heir. She’s young enough to be trusted by the next generation of warriors, and to be seen as molded by you and your reign. But she’s known: her family has always been at Court. _She’s_ not an outsider.”

 

Klark ignores the jab, takes another deep breath. “Does any part of you still want the throne for yourself?”

 

He takes even longer to respond this time. When he finally does so, it’s after a massive sigh.

 

“No,” he says.

 

“You understand why I might find it hard to believe.”

 

“Do you?” he lashes out. “Forgive me, I didn’t know you were so familiar with what Court life was like under my -- what a man might grow tired of, or wish to finally be free of, even if it means giving up all that power as well. Power,” he says, quietly and bitterly, “is not worth the whole of a man’s life. Or living forever in the shadow of a woman who valued nothing but.”

 

Klark sits back, considering him. “I thought you resented being sent away from the Court, but you’re talking as if...”

 

“I resented being treated as if I had nothing more to offer than my absence,” Roan steps in. “I resented being treated as if I were not part of the Ice Nation as well. I didn’t miss being seen, first and forever, as my mother’s son.”

 

... huh.

 

“I did that,” Klark says. “I’m sorry.”

 

His head snaps up, but he looks as wary as if she’d pulled one of her knives.

 

“I didn’t dislike you just for that,” she continues, “but that was a big part of it. That was a bad place to begin. I’m sorry.”

 

Still tense, he asks: “What other reason did I ever give you for dislike or mistrust?”

 

Oh, this one’s hard. This one requires her to take a few deep breaths to calm the remembrance of anger and impotence. “I felt that you, more than anyone, were in a position to warn me about Ontari. You didn’t, and we nearly lost the fosterlings.”

 

The official story had always been raiders taking the children. But the innermost circle at Court could not be blind to the rescue mission coinciding with Ontari’s disappearance. Apparently she hadn’t been well known outside of that society -- no friends, no tutors besides Nia -- and most assumed she had moved on to another settlement. But Klark had suspected there were a few people who had guessed the truth, Roan chief among them.

 

“I see.” Roan is quiet for a second. “Was she really a nightblood?”

 

Klark gapes at him.

 

He puts up a hand. “No, don’t tell me, I heard what you did in yesterday’s hearing, and I... but you should never admit to anything.”

 

“You didn’t know?”

 

“My mother dropped very specific hints. But I never knew if it was a test of my loyalty -- would I try to get rid of her by reaching out to Woods Clan, only to discover it was a ruse, and so on.” His mouth tightens. “She was fond of those games.”

 

“... but if she wasn’t a nightblood, why would she have so much of Nia’s attention?”

 

“Ontari was declared her heir. You didn’t know?” he asks, on seeing Klark’s shock. “Ten years before you appeared. My mother came back from a raid with a girlchild she said was orphaned by Woods Clan warriors, proclaimed she had decided to take this poor orphan into her home and raise her to be the next Queen.” He shrugs. “I never imagined Ontari had anything to trade on besides my mother’s whim, and so with her death... I suppose I owe my own apology. I thought I was sparing her unwarranted mistrust and derision by letting you think I was the Heir. But I was wrong.”

 

It’s very like, Klark thinks to herself, the long and varied sessions with the needle she has to sit through for her more elaborate tattoos. For so long it’s just abstract shapes and lines that never connect. And then, all at once: the details fill in, the shapes emerge, and she wonders that it’s taken her this long to know what she’s looking at.

 

“You were never Heir?” she has to ask, one more time.

 

Roan gives her a bitter smile. “No. You never took my throne from me, or bestowed that honor away. If anything I’ve had more power in your court, not less.”

 

Huh, indeed.

 

“I have a new mission for you,” she says slowly. “One that will send you even farther from the Court, and for a very long time. In fact, you might not ever have a chance to come back.”

 

His mouth thins with displeasure. “I see.”

 

“No, it’s not...” She sighs and straightens. “You know, if you didn’t want to be given the really difficult tasks, then you shouldn’t have been so obvious at being good at the other ones.”

 

She can see him turning this over in his head, considering it and her. “What do you have in mind?”

 

“Delphi. They’re the center of trade, but I don’t think they’ll ever make a real effort to establish a base within the Ice Nation. For what it’s worth, I don’t think they should -- you know our people don’t value city structures or permanence the way most other clans do.” She looks him right in the eye. “Which is why I think we should establish ourselves within Delphi.”

 

“... I’m listening.”

 

“If we make them come to us, we’ll lose their interest. They want certainty, a known return on their investment on the trade and materials brought to our border -- not travelling every season with the Court, or searching for settlements that might possibly want their wares. I think... I think we should establish our presence in their capital instead. A small fraction -- perhaps even a community -- of Ice Nation who will transport goods maybe once or twice a year, infiltrating the market through the very hub of trade among the clans.”

 

Roan, in contrast, leans back as he considers her. “We have no idea what goods will be in demand. Or what guild leaders we’ll need to partner with to trade. Even if we figure all that out, we’ll need an agreement with the lake people to make sure shipments across their territory aren’t raided.”

 

“Exactly. There’s a lot to be done.” She takes another deep breath. “I’m trusting you with a lot.”

 

He blinks at her. Abruptly: “You should be careful. If I succeed, and it’s profitable -- who’s to say that more Ice Nation people won’t want to have a safer, settled life in Delphi? That small community you mentioned could grow quite a bit.”

 

She shakes her head. “I’m not Nia. If people want to declare for Delphi -- or if they simply want to live in their cities -- let them. They’re my people, not my prisoners.”

 

“The Ice Nation’s power is in its numbers.”

 

“It was,” she counters. “But in the future, who knows? It could be our resources. It could be the land. It could be trade.” She smiles to herself before adding: “And I think yes, there will be a few who choose to leave its borders. But I...” Answering all those questions. Wearing her furs and pride into Lexa’s presence. “I love our way of life. I don’t think I’m alone.”

 

“No,” Roan says quietly, and a shadow passes over his face.

 

“If you think it’ll be too hard, living so far --”

 

“It’s a venture that should be taken, and you’re right, I’m the best to do it. Besides,” and his hand comes up to lightly touch one of the scars on his face, “it might be nice to spend a few years among people who don’t know what I did to earn these.”

 

There doesn’t seem to be anything to say, after that, and after a few awkward seconds Klark clears her throat and stands. “Well, if you accept the position, that’s all. The representative for Delphi says you’re welcome to share his caravan.”

 

Roan also stands, but before she can leave, he bows.

 

It’s not the kind of bow she’s ever had from him before. It’s shallower, and quicker. But he doesn’t smirk through it, or lower his eyes. And he bows his head, as well.

 

“I look forward to serving my Queen,” he says, and for the first time, she believes him.

 

* * *

 

Genai is not happy about the addition to their party. She is not happy at all.

 

“We don’t have the rations to cover them,” she hisses at Klark. The Ice Nation warriors who didn’t come down with Klark to the Summit, but with Roan to fight the Mountain, had departed several days earlier. Taking the bulk of the supplies with them.

 

Klark shrugs as she adjusts her stirrups. Whoever used them last -- her double -- liked them to hang lower than she does. What an odd thing to differ on. “So we’ll hunt to make up the difference.”

 

“Hunt on Woods Clan lands?” Genai asks, waspish.

 

“It’s the least favor they can give in return for... well, everything else.”

 

“I agree,” comes a familiar voice from the ground, and Klark just manages not to jerk upright to see Lexa standing a few feet away. “Of course, you’re also welcome to make up the difference from the rations we’ll be bringing.”

 

“Bringing?” she asks, stupidly. She blames the eventful morning. And being on horseback. It still doesn’t feel natural to her. “Where are you bringing them?”

 

“To the Ice Court, of course,” Lexa says, looking up at her. Their relative positions should make Klark feel like she has the advantage. It’s not working. “I’ve decided to spend the winter there.”

 

“The _wint-_ -”

 

“You shouldn’t be worried,” the Commander says. “Of course, normally the summer would be a much better time for such a prolonged visit. But this will be our first winter where the Mountain will not terrorize us, or plan to strike when darkness and food shortages leave us most vulnerable. I think this season, at least, will be a very quiet one, where people will be happy to stay in their homes and enjoy a very welcome time of peace.”

 

“I didn’t --” That had been her second thought, but her first had been: “Shouldn’t you _ask_ for an invitation?”

 

Lexa cocks her head to the side, eyes glittering. “Didn’t you give me one, when you said I needed more time than just a handful of days to understand your people? Or was it an empty challenge.”

 

Klark grips her reins hard enough to make her horse dance a bit, uneasy. She forces herself to relax, and pats at its shoulder. “Genai, go ride out of earshot for a moment.”

 

“Your Maje--”

 

_“Go.”_

 

Lexa nods off her own man as well -- the look he shoots Klark is even sulkier than Genai’s -- and then turns calmly back to Klark.

 

Klark has never seen her out of formal or semi-formal clothes, now that she thinks of it: all her dealings with the Commander have been structured around some form of political event. She looks... different, in simpler, less structured clothing. She holds her limbs looser, without the iron discipline of before. She looks lighter.

 

Klark doesn’t want to get distracted. “If this is... Commander. If this is about... if you’re trying to pursue me --”

 

“No,” Lexa breaks in firmly. She hesitates. “Not... I won’t pretend I’m not waiting for your answer to my feelings. But you were right, before. I took your people as my people, but I never truly treated them as such. Some of it was necessary -- I was fighting a war. Since our talk, however, I’ve been thinking I should make up for lost time.”

 

She raises her eyebrow slightly at the end of that, making it clear she doesn’t just mean an overdue visit to the Ice Court.

 

Klark, finding herself at an impasse, tosses her head back. “Fine,” she says. “But keep up or be left behind.” She spurs her own horse into a trot before Lexa can offer a counter to it.

 

“They’re coming with us, too,” Klark says curtly as she approaches Genai. “We still leave in an hour, I don’t care if they’re not ready.”

 

“To what purpose?” Genai asks, clearly thunderstruck. “To visit in winter, why would she possibly --”

 

“She says she owes it to our people, not to put off knowing them better any longer.”

 

Slowly, Genai closes her mouth, looking thoughtful.

 

“Shut up,” Klark mutters. It wasn’t that much more admirable on Lexa’s part. It _wasn’t_.

 

“I didn’t say anything,” Genai says calmly.

 

True. She didn’t have to. She already knew what Klark was thinking.

 

Between the rough road ahead, the winter awaiting them, and the company, this is going to be a singular journey.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

Klark wakes up in her tent.

 

She lays there with her eyes closed for a long time, listening to Genai and Trest breathe next to her in their own sleeping rolls. It’s strange, sleeping with so many other people around. She has her own quarters in the Ice Court, and she and Abi used to take turns keeping sentry at night. She’s been trained to sleep lightly, and in shifts. Even just Echo in the bed with her often has her up and wandering in the silent hours of the night.

 

She gets up gingerly, moving slowly so she won’t disturb the First or Second as she climbs out of her roll, over their prostrate bodies, and out of the tent.

 

It’s still so warm here, even with the sun out of the sky. And the night is filled with this low, insistent chirping -- an insect, they explained to her, that makes the sound by rubbing its legs. She makes a face as she wanders past the boundary set by the warriors standing guard for the night. They mark her, but don’t try to stop her.

 

She doesn’t wander too far afield. Klark picks a bit of elevated land where she can still see the banked cookfires of their encampment in case random disaster strikes and she needs to hustle back. The cool grass is a welcome relief against her skin of her bare arms as she leans back into it, tickling around her waist as it creeps under her shirt as well. The breeze picks up, and she doesn’t fight her eyes from drifting shut in the sudden comfort of it. It’s a relief to escape the bustle and energy of their traveling party, if only for an hour or so. She’s spent the last handful of days feeling hemmed-in, surrounded. Watched.

 

“Do you often explore unknown lands in the dead of night without your bodyguards?”

 

She’s felt one pair of eyes on her especially.

 

Klark cracks one eye open to confirm before tucking her hands up and behind her head, making a show of getting comfortable. “You left Gustus behind.”

 

“He has a wretched temper when he doesn’t get a full night’s sleep.”

 

“Is that what his problem is? I wondered if his horse had a saddle burr.”

 

Lexa is silent for a moment. “He’s been on his best behavior, so far.”

 

Well. Apparently Genai has been right all along, and Klark _doesn’t_ know how lucky she has it with her own bodyguard.

 

“Why did you follow me, Commander?” She could ask why Lexa was awake in the first place, if there’s something troubling her sleep. She’s not sure if she wants Lexa to think she cares.

 

Lexa comes a bit closer, but doesn’t sit. “I don’t mean to disturb you, and I’ll go back to the camp if that’s what you prefer.”

 

“You’re not answering the question.”

 

She still doesn’t for another stretch of silence, until she says very softly: “I thought you might want to say what you have to say to me, and where no one else would hear.”

 

There’s very little privacy in their party. It’s small enough: Klark, Genai, Trest, the handful of Ice Nation warriors who first came down to the Summit, Raven and Wells, Lexa and her own tidy entourage. She knows them all by now, and they know her, after days in only each other's’ company: meals taken together, hours riding together, nights setting up tents and sleeping under the stars together.

 

But despite the familiarity and overlapping activities, she’s managed to avoid Lexa. When they’re on the road she keeps her horse by Wells’s -- at first to help distract him from the discomfort as he adapted to the hours of long riding, and then because she enjoyed his company. He’s not just smart: he’s funny, with a quick, dry humor that has her laughing even as she still struggles with the language barrier. Even that’s becoming less of an obstacle with practice, and now Wells feels confident enough to ask for instruction in the tongue of the Ice Nation.

 

At first she thought he’d misspoken. “You mean Woods Clan’s language,” she’d said. “The language they spoke at Polis.”

 

His forehead creased. “But that’s not what you speak, is it? Up where we’re going?” Klark shook her head. “Well, that’s what I want to learn.”

 

“Why?”

 

He’d ridden along for a bit without answering, but she knew him well enough by then to know he was turning the question over in his head, searching for the best answer he thought he could give. She’s not very patient by nature, but she’s found his best responses are worth waiting for.

 

“I don’t have any family, back at Camp Jaha,” he said finally. “It’s named for my father, and we think he died in the journey down to Earth. My mother passed when I was a kid.”

 

“My family is gone, too,” she found herself offering, unexpectedly. “My father when I was a baby, my mother two years... behind?”

 

“Two years ago,” he corrected with a quick, warm smile. “Yeah? I didn’t know that.” He lapsed back into silence, and by then Klark could tell he was processing this new information. “Anyway,” he resumed, “my father used to lead our people.”

 

Which was new information to _Klark._ It made several things she’d noticed about him click into place, like beads settling into their pattern on a necklace.

 

“When I was growing up I was always seen as his son first, myself second.” He grimaced. “If ever. I... can see, now, that put me in a dark place. I did some stupid stuff to make my life feel like my own.”

 

Klark wanted to ask if he’d ever traveled for days through a screaming winter storm and then challenged the figure of a life of nightmares to a duel to the death, but she was supposed to be listening. Not competing.

 

“Maybe I’m still doing that stuff,” he said, a little ruefully. “But I think about things like: the Arkers, I mean, the Sky People, we’re struggling right now. We thought the Earth was uninhabited and it’s not. We’re living on borrowed land. We know almost nothing about the eleven other clans. We need to learn so much if we’re going to survive, but most of them are still in shock and dealing with trauma. So I figure: I’m not traumatized. Maybe I should be one of the people to go out, explore, learn, and bring it back.”

 

“A good plan. But almost no one outside of Ice Nation speaks out language. Maybe not so useful.”

 

“Maybe. Or maybe... maybe that’s the edge we need, knowing something not even other clans do. Maybe we can be Ice Nation-whisperers after we stop dealing in bone marrow with the Mountain.” He quirked a smile. “Or maybe it’ll just be me, and I can be the guy who travels back and forth, and is just... ready. For when I’m needed.”

 

Rather than waiting for life to finally give him a purpose. Klark nodded. A very good plan.

 

“Can I ask something personal?” Wells had wet his lips. “Were you close to your mom?”

 

Close. She doesn’t think he means proximity.

 

“I ask because, my dad and me. We didn’t get along. We... fought.” His mouth did something complicated. “I think the last time we ever spoke we were fighting.”

 

“Me, too,” Klark felt like she could confess. “When she died she was instructing me, but before that -- when she went out -- before that was a fight.”

 

“Does it ever feel better?” His voice was hoarse, and when he looked over she could see he was on the edge of tears. “Do you ever stop feeling so... awful about that?”

 

She knew he didn’t just mean the fact the last words were spoken in anger. He meant all of it: loving someone who had demanded of you until the breaking point, losing them before you were ready. Even with all that anger and bad feeling, not being ready to let them go. Not yet.

 

“No,” she said, as gently as she could when her own throat felt rough with unshed tears.

 

Thankfully, that was when Raven had rejoined them. Raven was much more social than Wells -- she bounced around the group at will, chatting with one person and then the next. She’d laughed off Wells’s disbelief at her lack of soreness, despite the fact it was her first time riding a horse as well.

 

“Do you know how many repairs I did upside-down, hanging by my legs around a ridge beam? Face, it, Jaha: you’re soft.”

 

But she’d said it as a tease, and Wells didn’t seem too bothered. That appeared to be Raven’s gift: she could bring a smile to anyone’s face. Or almost anyone. She was trying her best with Lexa, though, spending a surprising amount of time by the Commander’s side. Klark had no idea what they might be talking about, but from what she could see, they were having their own kind of fun. Even without the smile Lexa’s expression was one of openness and interest, eyes Raven’s animated face.

 

And then, inevitably, as if she could feel the other girl watching, turning to meet Klark’s.

 

She’s not trying to meet Klark’s gaze now, though. She’s staring off into the dark, away from the lights of camp. She has a set to her jaw Klark is coming to recognize as Lexa preparing for rejection.

 

She sighs. “Sit down. I’m getting a crick in my neck.”

 

Lexa does so, silhouetted by the cascading pinpricks of light that swirl over the canvas of the night sky.

 

Klark’s not sure how to start, so she says instead: “The stars are different here.”

 

“Yes.” Lexa tilts her head up to see them better, baring a long line of throat.

 

Klark abandons all pretense of small talk: “So, my coronation.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Almost _two years_ ago.” Something catches in the region of her heart, and pulls. “Why did you pretend to be my friend, that we would see each other at the Summit, if you knew then?”

 

“I didn’t pretend. We were -- I very much wanted to be -- friends.” Her voice lowers. “And I did think that we would meet, then.”

 

Klark leverages herself up onto her elbows, frowning. “What made you decide I should stay away?”

 

“A number of things. Since you were crowned the Mountain launched two attacks from the air that went far beyond our borders and into your territory -- I think news of your reign made them fear Ice Nation as a cohesive force. I wanted to keep you, personally, out of their range until we were sure in our plans for counter-attack.”

 

“What else?”

 

“I...” Lexa sighs, her eyes falling shut. “I told you I wasn’t proud of how I acted.” She gives her head a single shake. “I told Costia everything. She asked that you be kept away.”

 

 _Ouch_. Klark’s not sure which hurts more: that Lexa looked to Costia’s needs first, or that Lexa might have ruined any chance Klark had of hanging out with the Shadow-walker. “I hope calling me an irresponsible Queen was worth making your lover happy.”

 

“... that _wasn't_ the message I sent to the Ice Court.”

 

“Close enough, wasn’t it?” Klark knows she’s being petulant. She knows, she just -- it’s so unfair. Everything feels like it was decided without her, _around_ her. Lexa falls for her and runs away without saying a word. Klark wakes up and suddenly, Lexa is hers.

 

If Klark wants her.

 

She falls back onto the grass. Her head hurts. “You should take your warriors and turn back with the first light. I bet if you tried, you could catch up with Costia and be cozy in Polis together by the winter solstice.”

 

“No.”

 

Klark sits up. Her hand darts out. Lexa is capable of blocking her, but she isn’t on guard for it, and Klark manages to get her hand inside the neck of Lexa’s shirt. Maybe Lexa realizes what she’s reaching for, because when her own hand finally comes up she only wraps her fingers around Klark’s wrist, and doesn’t prevent her from pulling out the cord and the charm hanging from it.

 

The stars don’t cast a light as bright as the moon, but Klark can see her prize clearly. She caught glimpses of what Lexa has started wearing around her neck during nights when it caught and glinted in the firelight, even half-hidden under her shirt. It was once a heavy ring, bearing the symbol she’s seen Lexa wear in high ceremony, now beaten flat and twisted so that it loops back on itself. Eternally.

 

“You still love her.”

 

“Yes,” Lexa says easily. “I’m not ashamed of that. Or how she is, still very much a part of my life. But we will never be what we were again. And I’m not riding back to Polis for a long while yet.”

 

“Because we’re soul-tied.”

 

 _... please don’t hate her for it,_ the letter had read _. You don’t have to --_

 

“Because I love you,” Lexa interrupts her train of thought. She tugs on Klark’s wrist -- not away, but down, so that Klark relinquishes the ring and it falls outside of Lexa’s shirt. Lexa still keeps her hold on Klark, a line of connection. “I know this is all very strange and very sudden, to you. But our shared destiny has nothing to do with that.”

 

 _She chose you_ , Costia said.

 

But...

 

“You ran from me.” _From us._

 

Lightly, lightly, Lexa runs her thumb across the inside of Klark’s wrist -- that had always been her habit, Klark remembers, when she’s considering her next words. “I tried, yes.”

 

“What changed your mind? Are you sure it wasn’t destiny?” Maybe Lexa had just given into the inevitable. Klark’s not sure she wants love as a surrender.

 

Not even from Lexa.

 

“I ran, and I’m sorry. But I never tried to stop loving you. I thought... I thought I could keep that, at least, even if I had to hide it from you. And others.” A flash of pain across Lexa’s face. “I made so many mistakes. I know I owe you --”

 

“I don’t want apologies, Lexa.” She doesn’t -- at least, not for trying, for Costia’s sake. That’s the easiest part to understand. In fact, it would have been a lot harder to forgive a Lexa who could easily abandon someone she’d loved for so long. “I want to understand.”

 

Lexa is silent for a long moment, and the only sounds in the dark night is the breeze rustling through the long grasses, the chirping insects all around them.

 

“I’m not used to failing at things,” she says. “I thought all I needed was... more. More distance, more time, more effort. “Even when I knew I had failed, I could not admit it out loud -- that fell to Costia.”

 

“When did you know?”

 

“When I first met -- your other self,” Lexa admits, reluctantly, and she holds Klark’s wrist just a touch tighter when Klark might pull away. Klark isn’t trying very hard, so she lets her. “Who you think of as another self. She was so... angry. She would look at me as if...” Lexa swallows.

 

“You had to know you made me angry, too.”

 

“I did. I thought it would make things easier, instead of...” Lexa closes her eyes. “I didn’t know how it would _feel_ , you looking at me like I had already lost you.”

 

Klark pulls free of her hold, and this time Lexa lets her go.

 

“I don’t know what to do,” Klark says quietly. “I don’t know if I can trust you, despite everything.”

 

Lexa opens her eyes. They have a brilliant sheen in the starlight. “Do you want to trust me?”

 

She wants to know if Klark... if she also...

 

That’s what she’s really asking.

 

Klark stands, and Lexa watches her.

 

“I don’t know what to do,” Klark says again. The air has gone from comforting to just a touch too cold, and she shivers.

 

Lexa’s face softens. “I meant what I said, about taking this journey for the people of the Ice Nation. I’m not chasing you.” She climbs to her feet as well, brushing stray grass from her clothes. “You know how I feel, and that it won’t change. Whether you trust that or not, whether you --”

 

She pauses, reaches out a hand as if to touch Klark’s cheek. But just before she can, Klark catches another glimpse of the charm hanging from her neck.

 

Heart pounding wildly in her chest, Klark flinches away.

 

Lexa’s fingers curl inward to her palm, and she gives Klark something that’s not quite a smile.

 

“You know how I feel,” she repeats softly, and walks away to leave Klark on the cold hillside with her thoughts.

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

Thinking about Lexa -- what it might mean, if she and _Lexa_...

 

It makes Klark cold all over one minute and like she might burn to ash in the next. Like she’s been tumbled into a snowdrift and she doesn’t know which way to dig in order to breathe fresh air.

 

So she ignores it.

 

Not the best solution. Not a solution at all, really, and she knows that. But it’s an option, and she really, truly, is unsure about what else to do.

 

And part of her wants to see what Lexa does. If she meant it when she promised that she wouldn’t chase Klark, if the underlying promise -- that she would wait, that she would give whatever space and time was needed -- was true. Or if Lexa would chafe. Being unsure of love... that has to be a new state of being, for her.

 

But if Lexa finds it uncomfortable to be the vulnerable one, the one who now waits on _Klark_ and her decisions, she doesn’t show it. Everything proceeds as it did before, and her interactions with Klark are the same mix of careful regard and unmistakable interest.

 

Klark is enjoying the journey, she’s surprised to find. Technically this is not her first journey along this road, but since she fell into a dead faint the last time and didn’t truly wake up until her head was in Lexa’s lap at the foot of the Mountain, she doesn’t remember much. She doesn’t get many excuses to travel too far outside the territory of the Ice Court, and she tries to enjoy the experience while she can.

 

It’s also fun, being around so many people her own age. Even with the younger warriors at court there’s a level of reserve -- even with Echo, really. Klark is their Queen, first and foremost. But Raven and Wells aren’t her subjects. Neither is Lexa. It changes things, even if they have to keep up certain appearances in front of the soldiers travelling with them. As they travel farther together their talk becomes easier, freer.

 

Which backfires against her one night, when they’re all huddled around the dying cookfire. They’ve only just crossed into Ice Nation territory properly, but the skies seem darker and the air that much colder for it. They turn in earlier each night, and share what warmth they can after the last meal until then, instead of going off on their own.

 

Those nights are made even warmer by the liquid Raven and Wells pass around their little party. Everyone who takes a swallow from their sizeable flask gasps, and then presses the center of their chest. They call it moonshine, but Klark thinks it deserves a name more in tune with the sun and its harsh, burning power. Once the initial heat fades, though, it’s _lovely_.

 

Lovely enough that Klark doesn’t even mind when Genai tells the story of the snowcat.

 

“So there she was,” Genai holds court at the fire, arms wide open as she gazes into the middle distance of memory: “The girl who walked out of the storm. The girl who slew _Queen Nia_. And _I_ have to be the one to defend her from an angry mass of fur and fangs. All because she couldn’t stop staring, like this,” and here she imitates Klark, or how she says Klark looked in that moment: open-mouthed and blinking.

 

Wells is hugging his knees, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

 

“I wasn’t,” Klark protests.

 

“You were.”

 

“I never --”

 

“ _Genai, do their ears_ always _grow that big_?” Genai repeats in tones of breathless wonder. She then rolls her eyes. “You were almost killed, and the Ice Nation thrown back into chaos. For ears.”

 

“I hadn’t seen one before!”

 

Raven is giggling so hard she has to wipe at her eyes. “She has a point. We were thrown off-guard by a lot when we first landed. And she’s better now, right?”

 

Genai’s expression sours, and the laughter starts up again before she even says: “I took the pelt to put among the other trophies in the winter hall, and she strokes it when she thinks the rest of us don’t see. Sometimes, I think she talks to it.”

 

The others are _howling_ , and Klark feels her face turn red. But she doesn’t really mind. (And Genai’s not wrong.)

 

Then she catches sight of Lexa.

 

Lexa is not laughing. She’s leaning back, relaxing slightly apart from the ring of those around the fire -- and watching Klark. She’s not smiling, but her face, her whole self, is an expression of joy. Not even the flames can account for the brightness of her eyes.

 

It makes Klark dizzy. Just thinking back to it over the next few days has her feeling like she’s spun around and around in place, and is now ready to tip off the edge of the world and into the boundless sky.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

So she doesn't refuse when Lexa offers to keep her company on a short hunt.

 

Their rations hold steady, but it’s been quite a few days in a row of preserved food. Klark thinks something fresh will help keep their spirits up on the road ahead, and make the days when there’s no option besides dried and seasoned food more palatable. She gets up just before dawn, a few hours before they plan to start riding. There’s a freshly fallen snow on the ground that will probably melt before the sun is directly overhead.

 

Lexa is waiting when Klark exits the tent, but Klark is surprised: she doesn’t try to make conversation. They set off on foot, boots crunching in the snow as the light slowly spills over the landscape. They both carry a bow and arrow -- Klark is more used to hunting with her knives, but she’s not looking to bring down heavy game. Lexa is surprisingly good with hers, she thinks, as the other girl takes down a hare.

 

She’s so comfortable in their silence that she doesn’t notice the snowcat carcass until they’re almost on top of it.

 

“ _Oh_ ,” Klark lets out, pained and unthinking. And then she’s almost angry at herself for it. She knows she’s not supposed to be so pained at the sight of a skinned animal, even with the waste. Snowcats make for bad meat, but they’re prized for their fur. But she’s angrier at the fact of it, and she’s ready to fight whatever teasing or mockery Lexa might send her way.

 

But Lexa’s looking off into the distance, where a dark blot of woods rises off the land. Trees do grow in the Ice Nation, though not as thickly as down south -- they are older, darker things, with older and cunning creatures in them. A slight frown mars her forehead, eyes flickering to the carcass and back, and Klark understands: if the snowcat was being hunted, why make for the open spaces? Why not take cover in the forest?

 

“She was leading them away,” Lexa answers the unspoken question, and she’s moving off into the woods herself. Klark hesitates, and then follows.

 

By the time she catches up Lexa is kneeling in the snow, weapon sheathed, bending over a fallen tree trunk. She removes one glove and raps her knuckles on it, head to one side as she listens. She runs her hand across its length -- her fingers are already white with cold, and Klark is opening her mouth to tell her to stop being ridiculous, but then her hand disappears from sight. The trunk is hollowed out, Klark realizes, and Lexa has just reached inside.

 

Pain flashes across the Commander’s face as she winces, then sets her mouth in determination. She withdraws her hand, slowly, carefully, raising into the air --

 

The kitten kicks and cries, soft paws paddling as he’s held up by his scruff.

 

“Just the one,” Lexa says, as Klark gapes. “His eyes are like yours.” She moves as if to hand him off, and Klark unthinkingly steps back.

 

“I -- I can’t --”

 

Lexa looks at her, expression carefully empty. “Should I put him back?”

 

Klark shakes her head and holds out her hands.

 

Whatever fight the kitten had in him, he seems to have exhausted it hissing and snarling at Lexa. In Klark’s arms he collapses into a miserable-looking heap, his fur loose over his bones from hunger. She holds him tighter, carefully, but he doesn’t mind -- he tilts his head up and bats at her chin with an oversized paw, crying piteously.

 

It’s like it cracks her heart open.

 

Klark blinks at Lexa, feeling adrift. “He scratched you.”

 

Lexa looks down at the red lines across one hand. “I think I’ll survive.” She pulls her glove back on. “You should take him back to camp. We won’t catch anything as long as he’s making that noise.” She heads off deeper into the forest without another word.

 

* * *

 

In the days to come Klark quickly learns the three most important things about the kitten.

 

One: he eats. _A lot._

 

At first they don’t know what to feed him -- they have no milk. When Klark comes back to the campsite with him in her arms they try to offer him the choicest bits of uncooked meat. He noses at it, and then nudges it away, looking at Klark and crying. When he’s unhappy he makes sounds that remind her almost of a wounded bird’s.

 

Trest is the one who comes up with a solution. When Lexa returns with game slung over her shoulder Trest takes it off her, barely waiting to greet or thank her. Lexa blinks at him, but he’s already busy skinning the animals and paring fat away from the meat.

 

“You did this?” Klark hears Genai say as she walks over to Lexa, jerking her chin in Klark and the kitten’s direction. Klark keeps her head down and pretends to be very absorbed in how the snowcat is gnawing on her fingers.

 

“I found him. She didn’t want to leave him behind.”

 

Genai gives Lexa such an upbraiding look, Klark is pretty sure the insolence alone would have Gustus growling -- except the Woods Clan warrior has been conscripted into service by Trest. He has a mortar and pestle in his hands, putting his brutish strength to work as he pounds the extracted fat into a thin slurry. “More, _more_ ,” Trest urges in his fractured knowledge of Woods Clan tongue, with sweeping gestures for good measure.

 

“ _You_ did this,” Genai repeats, this time with a note of finality. She raises an eyebrow, significantly, and pokes Lexa in the shoulder with one finger.

 

“Do we have a problem?” Lexa asks coolly.

 

Genai snorts. “We? No.” She casts a look back at Klark.

 

Who turns her head away just in time, seeing Trest approach her with a waterskin and a beaming smile. “Use this,” he says, showing her how to get the kitten to take the opening of the skin in place of her raw-looking fingers. Then to squeeze the flexible body from the bottom, gently, gently, so that the fatty sludge inside doesn’t dribble from the kitten’s mouth as he hungrily begins to eat.

 

“I mixed it with snow to keep it fresh,” he says as they both watch the snowcat settle in, flexing his paws in satisfaction.

 

“Like your akutaq.”

 

“Mmhmm.”

 

“... okay, but he’s not getting my share if we find any cloudberries.”

 

“Clearly, _you’re_ the one with a problem.” Genai is attempting to keep her voice down, but Klark hears her. She’s not sure she cares, though, with an armful of happy snowcat. But she does hear Genai sigh. “You’re even worse than she is. At the moment, anyway.”

 

When Klark can force her gaze away from the blinking blue eyes of the kitten, she sees Genai stalking away into her tent. Leaving only Lexa, who looks back, carefully blank.

 

Klark grins at her so hard, her face hurts. “He’s eating,” she calls out.

 

After a second, Lexa smiles back.

 

Two: he’s a very, very good boy.

 

The first few days he spends drowsing in a makeshift sling Klark drapes across her chest and under her jacket, positioning the kitten so that he can poke his head out the top and sniff around, or let her know when he needs to eat or make waste. Klark goes about her time as normally as possible like this, giving him time to get to know everyone else in their party by smell or sound before she decides it’s time for him to really make friends.

 

He’s so good. He’s so clever, so smart, he listens when people talk to him and loves to play with any piece of string or bit of fluff they dangle in front of him, paws still clumsy and uncoordinated. The ends of Klark’s braids are his favorite, and if she’s not careful he sneaks them inside her jacket to chew on.

 

“What are you going to name him?” Raven asks, letting him hop after a long twig she’s scratching in the ashes of their campfire. The kitten allows scratches behind his ears and soft strokes along his spine, but he will not tolerate being picked up unless it’s Klark, and it’s her lap he practically lives in.

 

“Name him?” Klark asks.

 

“Yeah. Don’t you have any great heroes of legend, anything like that? Something he can live up to.”

 

“Ice Nation legends don’t use proper names,” Lexa says, watching from the other side of the fire. “They use descriptive phrases: the one who tamed the ocean, the one who chased the sun.” Her eyes flicker to Klark’s. “The girl who walked out of the storm.”

 

“Huh. Well, you have to name him something.”

 

Klark decides to give the job to Raven, since she’s so invested. The Sky girl broods over it for a few days, then sidles her horse up to Klark as she’s feeding the kitten. He can manage scraps of real meat, now, but they don’t stop riding for the midday meal and this is easier on horseback.

 

“What about Barbour?” Raven asks. “After Julian Barbour. He was a physicist. You know, kind of over my head, I’m an engineer, but... my mom had a bunch of his books on her datapad. I think she used to read him a lot. When she was younger.”

 

“I like it,” despite, truthfully, a lot of those words going over her head. She takes the skin away from the newly-named kitten. He grapples with her, but he’s only playing -- he’s already making his “ _frrt, frrt_ ” sound that means he’s especially content. “I think he likes it, too.”

 

Raven reaches out to tickle his chin and he chomps her finger. “Yowch,” but she extracts herself carefully, not jostling him. “He’s not really that tame, or a pet, is he? But I guess he’s not so bad.”

 

Three: except with Lexa.

 

The first time Lexa stretches out a tentative hand in introduction, Barbour swipes.

 

The Commander jerks back with a hiss, inspecting thin, bloody lines across her hand. They intersect nicely with the first set he gave her.

 

An insane panic grips Klark, and she wonders if you can be tried for attempted assassination via animal. “ _Gods_ , I -- I’m so sorry, he wasn’t like this with anyone else.” She has her fingers latched around him now as he squirms, hissing and stretching out his paws like he wants another chance at Lexa. Oh, who is Klark kidding, that’s exactly what he wants, and they’re going to have to run off into the trees to keep his little kitten neck from Gustus’s sword of execution.

 

“It’s fine,” Lexa says with a sigh, looking askance at Barbour in Klark’s lap, where he is currently trying to both flatten himself out and puff himself up as much as possible.

 

She gives him a wide berth after that. Klark is grateful it isn’t an issue, except Barbour -- growing bigger, it feels, with every passing day -- attempts to make it one. Sometimes, Klark swears, she thinks he’s stalking Lexa: focusing on her feet as she walks past and following with an intensity that says she’s prey. Whenever Lexa notices she stops and turns, and Barbour apparently remembers she’s a lot more -- a lot _bigger_ \-- than just her booted feet. This always leads to a staring contest, until Barbour turns and wanders off with all the nonchalance of a creature who doesn’t know what you’re talking about, he wasn’t hunting anyone. _He_ knows where his dinner comes from.

 

Every few days they try to find a stream of fresh water not too far from the road and break at midday, taking turns washing off the sweat and dirt of their journey. Klark has been keeping Barbour cleaned daily by dint of a wet cloth and vigorous rubbing, but this, he really loves: dipping his paws into the water and then jumping in with a _sploosh_ , paddling from one bank to another while she washes off. She keeps an eye on him to make sure he isn’t carried away by the current, but every time it looks like he might slip under he leaps for safety, clawing at grass and dirt until he’s free.

 

“He should start hunting on his own soon,” Genai tells her back at camp. “We’ll have less of a rodent problem in the hall this winter, I think.”

 

Klark sits on a felled log, drying her hair by the fire. She dried Barbour first, who did not appreciate it, growling the entire time. As soon as he could get free he sped off to see that Trest was cooking for their dinner. “Do you think it’s okay to keep him inside the hall? It almost feels like caging him.”

 

Genai snorts. “Wait until he grows to full size -- which shouldn’t be too long, now. Nothing will keep him _anywhere_ he doesn’t want to be.” She cocks an eyebrow at Klark. “You’re not hurting him. He would have died if you’d left him, either from starvation or in getting eaten by another predator. If he grows up and decides to go, he will. But he imprinted on you, so I doubt it.”

 

Klark didn’t know you could feel happy about something and wretched, at the same time. “I just want to do the right thing for him.”

 

“That’s what it means to love,” Genai says quietly. Something in the distance catches her eye, and she sighs. “But you can only protect them so much. After that, they have to take their own risks.”

 

She goes before Klark can asks what she means. A half-breath later, Lexa takes the place where the bodyguard was sitting on the log. Her own hair is loose and wet from her own dip in the stream, and she’s shivering a bit before she can scoot closer to the steady flames. She turns her head so that the weight of her damp hair falls in a heavy curtain across her shoulder, fanned out to dry more easily. It also puts her facing Klark. Catching her eye, Lexa smiles -- a little dreamily. She’s not vocal about it, never complains, but Klark has noticed she’s a bit more fastidious about the grime of living on the road than you might expect from a warrior with a reputation for launching herself into the blood and muck of battle.

 

She looks... almost senseless with pleasure, now, eyes half-lidded, lips refusing to relinquish that smile. The fire’s heat has already dried the more delicate curls at her temples. A few errant droplets of water slip down into the hollow made by her jutting collarbone, exposed where she hasn’t completely done up the fastenings on her shirt.

 

Klark’s mouth is suddenly dry. “Lexa... I...”

 

“Hmm?” Lexa moves closer, leans her head into Klarks personal space.

 

A _yowl_ from across the way makes them both start and jerk backward. The next second Klark’s lap is filled with growling, spitting snowcat kitten.

 

“What is wrong with you?” Klark demands. Her hands are locked in his fur on instinct -- but he’s not attacking Lexa, he doesn’t seem to want to go anywhere. If anything he feels rooted in place.

 

She casts a glance at Lexa in time to see understanding break over the other girl’s face in a wave.

 

“Did you -- _stop that_ \-- were you... I’m sorry he’s being like this.”

 

“No,” Lexa says, focused on the kitten. “It’s alright.”

 

“It’s not alright, if he’s going to spend the entire winter among the Ice Court he can’t be like this.”

 

Lexa props her chin in her hand. “I don’t think he will be, with anyone else.”

 

“... what?”

 

Barbour, out of the blue, calms himself. He plonks his butt down on Klark’s thigh and begins to groom.

 

“See what I mean?” Lexa asks drily, watching him. “We understand each other.”

 

“What?”

 

“Hmm,” Lexa agrees.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

It would be enough excitement for any one journey, Klark thinks; more than enough.

 

But then they find Echo in a face-off with more survivors from the sky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. As random as it may seem, Canadian lynx kittens really are born with sky-blue eyes that darken as they get older. It’s just one of the things which make them “the coolest animals ever,” according to me aged 7 and since. And you guys have no idea HOW LONG I have been planning that scene.
> 
> 2\. Extra-special thanks to blindwire and meetwickedfaith, who had a harder job than usual with my hands being so bad. All remaining errors, including possibly the kitten thing, are very much my own.


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